At the end of September 2023, reports appeared that the first lady of Ukraine had Russian citizenship: allegedly a bag with a Russian passport was found in a hiding place in her nationalized apartment in Yalta. We checked if this is true.
According to declarations about the income and property of Vladimir Zelensky, the wife of the President of Ukraine bought a penthouse in Yalta back in 2013. In May 2023, the Russian authorities of Crimea reportedthat Zelenskaya's apartment moved on into the ownership of the region, and at the end of September 2023, a video allegedly filmed during a search during the assessment of the value of this nationalized property went viral on the Internet. The video shows that Zelenskaya’s handbag was found in a hiding place, inside of which were money and a passport of a Russian citizen. “It’s clear that she received it back when they didn’t plan to make a president out of a clown (as Zelensky is sometimes called in pro-Russian media. - Ed.) and there was an option to go to work in Russia,” says the Telegram channel Colonelcassad (291,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). In the channel "#Montan!"(255,000 views) in the caption to the video they asked a reasonable question: "Before the search, the Russian security forces did not know that Lenka Kiyashko (maiden name) surname Zelenskaya. — Approx. ed.) such a passport?” At the same time, in “Signal"(169,000 views) clarified that the information about the passport “has not yet been confirmed.”
Similar publications appeared in other Telegram channels, including “Live broadcast"(678,000 views), "Sanya in Florida"(358,000), "Russia now"(263,000), "Putin on Telegram"(194,000), "Uncle Slava"(199,000), "Truthfulness"(188,000), "Observer"(184,000), Voblya (138,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(125,000), "Ostashko! Important"(119,000), "Alexander Semchenko"(86,000), "Yakov Kedmi"(73,000), Brief (69,000) and "Solovyov"(68,000, post deleted). Some Russian media also wrote about the Russian passport: “Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Constantinople", "Arguments and facts"(post deleted), "TV Center", "Radio Sputnik" And "Time press" Also, a viral video with an alleged search can be found on LiveJournal and in "VKontakte", where there is only one public post "Bad News" collected almost 360,000 views.
“Verified” tried to track where the spread of the viral video began. It turned out that the primary source was not the resources of the authorities or law enforcement agencies, but Crimean Telegram channels. According to the TGStat service, the earliest publication with a video and keywords appeared in the afternoon of September 28 in the channel “Crimea is ours” (less than 800 views, the post was deleted on September 30). 43 minutes later, a similar recording came out in the channel “News of Crimea” (27,000 views), while the channel’s logo was superimposed on the video. After another hour, a video with your logo published channel “Sevastopol Info” (10,000 views) - this version began to spread across all the media and social networks mentioned at the beginning of the analysis from September 30.
You can understand that the video being distributed shows a fake passport based on several signs. For example, “Verified” found that the document, which was allegedly issued on April 9, 2014, uses a photograph of Zelenskaya published on March 20, 2023 on website President of Ukraine and on social networks (Facebook* And Instagram*) his wife. The photo was posted in notes about the work of the Ukrainian center, created in Vilnius on the initiative of the first ladies of Ukraine and Lithuania. At the same time, the photo of Zelenskaya, apparently, was made a little earlier - at the end of February 2023.
Also, the photo doesn't match requirementsrequired for the Russian passport photo. Thus, Zelenskaya smiles, although her facial expression should be neutral, and the oval of her face does not occupy 70–80% of the photo area.
The passport series is noticeable in the video: 20 20. Some Russian and Ukrainian publications, as well as fact checkers, including our French Colleagues, stated that the first two digits of the series correspond to the code OKATO region in which the document was issued, and the second two - the year of issue. In fact, this is not entirely true.
The number 20 actually corresponds to the code of the Voronezh region, although Zelenskaya allegedly received her passport in Crimea. According to the site "Notebook Voronezh“, the local police denied the issuance of such a document: “The form with this series and number was not received by the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Voronezh Region, the specified document was not issued.” However, in rare cases, the first two digits of the passport series may don't match with region code. For example, something like this happened just when Russian Federation passports were being massively issued to residents of Crimea. The Republic of Crimea in Russian codification corresponds to code 35, while on the Internet you can find passports of residents of the peninsula with the code 33 (Kirov region), 54 (Oryol region) or 39 (OKATO does not have such a code).
The second two digits of the series are associated with the year in which the passport form was printed, but also not obliged coincide with the date of its receipt. On the blog of HFLabs, a company that analyzes customer databases, lead the following statistics: “We studied 100 million passports and found a rule: for 98.5% of documents, the issue date falls within the interval from “year of printing of the form - 5 years” to “year of printing of the form + 3 years.” This discrepancy results from different pace issuance of passports in different regions of Russia, and is also associated with features works of Goznak.
Also on the second page it is indicated that the passport was issued by the “department of the Federal Migration Service of Russia for the Republic of Crimea in the Central District of Simferopol,” although the word “republic” should be in the dative case - “republic”. The word "department" is Maybe stand in both the nominative and instrumental cases (“department”). In addition, Ukrainian publications report, that in the spring of 2014 in the column about the passport issuing authority in the case of Crimeans they simply wrote “Federal Migration Service”, that confirmed numerous photographs.
However, the largest accumulation of errors and inconsistencies in Zelenskaya’s fake passport are on the third page of machine readable string:
- The surname is coded as Zelenskaia, although should be written by Zelenska8;
- The first and middle names are separated by two placeholders (<<), although should separate by one (<);
- The middle name is coded as Vlodymyrovna, although should be written Vladimirovna. Latin letter y corresponds Russian letter "y";
- The second line begins like this: 202020556675. By rules first, the first three digits of the series and six digits of the passport number are entered into the code, and then the check number (X) is entered, that is, it should be like this: 202556675X;
- Then the number 100000 follows in the fake, although in this part of the code are indicated data on the date of birth of the passport holder in YYMMDD format (zeros are entered if the day and/or month of birth are not known). In the case of Zelenskaya it should be like this: 780206;
- After another check number indicated gender of the passport holder: F - female, M - male (which for some reason is marked in the fake).
It is noteworthy that some Russian media and bloggers, who previously spread fakes many times, either updated their materials, or reported false information regarding Zelenskaya’s Russian passport in separate publications (for example, Brief). Yes, publications EADaily And "Ukraine.ru“in their original notes they added that “the information turned out to be false,” and in the TV presenter’s Telegram channel Ruslana Ostashko (111,000 views) reported that Zelenskaya allegedly “quickly denied the video” and that she “had to make excuses for a joke about a Russian passport.” At the same time, “Verified” did not find any comments from the first lady of Ukraine. IN "Operations Z”(109,000 views) wrote this: “Guys, f***, let's try better. Instead of digging up really interesting information about the heads of the Khokhlor regime, you are making up fairy tales.”
Author of the Telegram channel "Sanya in Florida” (362,000 views) wrote the following about the fake: “The passport video is Russian propaganda and a fake. The passport photo was taken from Zelenskaya’s Instagram, the photo was published in 2023. But a unique photo could be generated using AI (artificial intelligence - editor's note) in five minutes. And those from the FSB who did this are lazy and stupid!” At the same time, back in the summer, a photo of Zelenskaya’s Israeli passport was posted on the same channel, which also sorted it out “Checked” and found that it was a similar fake. In that case, there was no denial from the channel.
Probably the most extraordinary versions of the appearance of a fake document were put forward by the blog “What about talking?!" in "Zen" (not associated with the YouTube channel of the same name by journalist Irina Shikhman**) and the publication "Notebook" The authors of the first believe that Zelenskaya herself ordered the “cheap fake” and deliberately left it in the hiding place of her Yalta apartment (it is not known exactly where the viral video was filmed). In the second case, it is assumed that the fake passport was created by the Russian authorities using artificial intelligence: “So the video is a fake? Most likely yes. However, this does not exclude the fact that the Russian special services could confiscate the passport of Russian citizen Elena Zelenskaya. But for a number of reasons, when creating the video, they used the capabilities of AI, which created abstract digital symbols. After all, if someone deliberately prepared a fake in order to pass it off as a real document, he would take into account the inconsistencies.”
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
**Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation contributed journalist Irina Shikhman to the list of foreign agents.
Cover photo: social networks
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