Is the story true about how Zelensky took 300 kg of cocaine from Argentina?

In March 2024, the news dispersed on the network about an intercepted telephone conversation, which supposedly proves the involvement of the President of Ukraine in drug smuggling. We checked the veracity of these messages.

Sensational notes on the transportation of a large batch of cocaine on Ukrainian Bort No. 1 appeared in the Russian media in late March. The authors of these texts, citing publications in foreign media, argued that the transfer of 300 kg of the drug took place in mid -December 2023, when Zelensky Arrived In Argentina, the inauguration of the new president of the country Havier Miley, and behind the organization of the operation stood a large international cartel.

This was reported TV channel "Tsargrad", "Moscow Komsomolets","Arguments and facts" Live24, Newsland, "TV Center","Public news service"And other media. The news also actively distributed to Telegram, including in the channels "Sanya in Florida"(490,000 views at the time of writing this analysis),"Russia now"(300,000),"Thirteenth"(175 000),"Mordor's voice"(170 000) and"Sheikh Tamir"(170 000).

Although viral publications say that the transportation of cocaine took place as part of the Ukrainian government attempts to reorganize drug trafficking through Eastern Europe, reports that the country's president Vladimir Zelensky is using drugs, Distributing On the network at least 2019, when he announced participation in the elections. After the start of a full -scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this narrative began to be used even more actively in propaganda materials. "Verified" already disassembled videos, supposedly proving The fact of the pernicious addiction of the Ukrainian leader wrote about art installationsdepicting the nose of Zelensky with white powder, and also studied the appeals of a number of western stars (Dean Norris, Malcolm MacDowell, Mike Tyson), urging the policy to get rid of their dependence. All these messages turned out to be fakes.

In notes on drug smuggling aboard the Zelensky media and Telegram channels, they referred to publications in several foreign publications. The main source was the American media The Boston Times, which, in turn, rely on the investigation of the Mexican journalist Marti Forty. In his article, he used an audio recording of negotiations between two members of an unnamed international drug cartel, which, which is alleged, intercepted Interpol during the surveillance of the actions of the syndicate. On the record, one of the drug dealers supposedly directly tells his assistant that the Cocaine party is intended for the delegation of the Ukrainian president. This information was allegedly confirmed by Sebastian Salgado, a journalist of the Argentinean publication Data Urgente. Many Russian -language publications on this subject were accompanied video recording His conversation with the journalist Olga Garbuz. Also, some resources referred to articles on the sites of San Francisco Chronicle and Intel Drop.

Let's figure out what these resources are. There really is Bostontimes.org article From March 25, on which the authors of notes in the Russian media relied. In the section "About us" It is saidThat The Boston Times appeared in 1972, for many years was the "guiding star of journalistic honesty" and received several Pulitzer prizes. All these statements are false. There is no print publication with that name (the newspaper of the same name has stopped existence in 1933), and the laureate of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize repeatedly She became The Boston Globe from the same city. Data service for verification of domain names Who.is testifythat the Bostontimes.org website was registered in January 2024, and the first articles appeared on it only in March.

The Boston Times logo is not familiar with the Google image search service service, that is, it is very likely to be found only on the publication’s website. The emblem at the same time contains non -existent words Jubinldress, Jecelolatcye, Ieston, Tnensy and Uboutelcy. Apparently, the image was generated by a neural network.

Photos from several articles on Bostontimes.org for some reason wear Russian -speaking Names. Apparently, these Pictures were Borrowed From the site "Gazeta.ru", and the titles of the corresponding articles were the names of the files.

In some publications The involvement of Zelensky in cocaine smuggling as a source does not appear The Boston Times, but San Francisco Chronicle - enough famous American publication that has existed since the middle of the 19th century. However, the corresponding article It is posted on the Sanfranchron.com website, while the oldest newspaper North California uses the sfchronicle.com domain. The resource, which is told about the transportation of drugs from Argentina to Ukraine, was registered March 17, 2024 and uses another Logo, although it claims to be committed to "honest standards in journalism."

Moreover, the factor from the Italian project Open discoveredthat Bostontimes.org and Sanfranchron.com sites as of the end of March were associated with the same server with the Russian IP address 95.165.66.27. In early April, the same IP address was The server on which the site is located vidvist.com - Small hosting video materials, many of which are dedicated to Donbass. According to research The project “Bitter Block”, English -speaking news sites related to this IP, are much larger and all of them broadcast pro -Komorlev narratives. Among them, in particular, the publication DC Weekly ("verified" already Disassembled His publications containing false Information about Vladimir Zelensky and his wife Elena).

Another source of information about cocaine and aircraft of the Ukrainian delegation is the Icelandic publication The Intel Drop. This resource, founded in September 2022 and registered in the Netherlands, calls Myself with an “independent source of news for the reconnaissance and financial community”, and its editorial office supposedly includes “current and retired exploration professionals who all together fear the level of censorship, control and outright“ black propaganda ”fed to the wide public.” At the same time, he repeatedly published fakes on the topic of war in Ukraine. In particular, in 2023 The Intel Drop announced Russian hit According to the secret bunker NATO in the Lviv region, distributed Video recording On the connection of the Elena Zelenskaya Foundation with the trade in children and Audio recording sharp criticism by Vladimir Zelensky of a number of Western leaders, as well as the news about purchase Ukrainian president of the former villa of Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Education and Propaganda of Nazi Germany.

The time has come to consider the sources on which these supposedly foreign publications are based in their texts about cocaine smuggling. The Boston Times has a link to the investigation, published on March 24, already mentioned above by the Mexican journalist Marti Forti on the Medium.com platform. As of early April, this publication was already removed from the site with the entire account, but it managed Subtract. Journalist Marti Forti really existsTrue, according to his profile in Linkedin, he does not live in Mexico, but in Brazil. The biography of Forti says that he specializes in geopolitics. In addition to Medium.com, the journalist published a video on the YouTube channel PlataForma Multipolar-Mex (@Multipolarmex).

Remote publication on Medium contains several interesting details. In particular, this text says that the scandalous call was intercepted in early 2023.

That's just Javier Miley Won In the second round of the presidential elections of Argentina on November 19, 2023, so it would be strange to agree on anything, without an official invitation to the inauguration and not knowing about the date.

It is also specified that drug dealers mention the president of Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation. However, if you listen to an intercepted audio recording that was Layd On the Formosa TV YouTube channel on March 21, it will not be able to find the mention of Zelensky or Ukraine-only the word "president". On the site of Interpol itself, as expected, there are no reports of interception. At the same time, Formosa TV is not at all a television channel, as one might think: this is a page with 265 subscribers, the first videos on which appeared at the same time, March 21. Almost all the videos on it, with the exception of wiretaps, are reports on the drug trafficking, shot by different Latin American media.

The second source that allegedly confirmed the information about drugs from Argentina is the local journalist Sebastian Salgado, the creator of the YouTube channel Data Urgente. On published on March 24 video He communicates on this topic with Russian journalist Olga Garbuz, but does not give any convincing evidence. Salgado is a completely real person, famous his pro -Kremlin position. After 2014, he repeatedly came to the Donbass, where he shot the mini-series Tango Freedom in Lugansk. By data The European Platform of Election Observation (EPDE), in 2023, Salgado was an observer in the elections in the annexed Russian part of the Zaporizhzhya region. Currently Argentinean works On the Hispantv channel - an Iranian resource broadcasting on the Spanish -speaking countries and repeatedly caught in the spread of fakes. For this reason, the channel Blocked On YouTube. If in profile Salgado on the site Dataurgente.com click on the icon in the section of social networks, then It will open The page of Russian hosting SITE123.com.

Thus, there is not a single argument in favor of the fact that the story of 300 kg of cocaine for Zelensky and his delegation is true. At first, the audio recording used as evidence was published on a freshly built YouTube channel, then the news based on it began to replicate journalists with a dubious reputation and pseudo-witch media with a common server, and then large Russian media joined the process. The same scheme used, for example, with the spread of fake news about the expensive real estate of Zelensky in different countries.

Photo on the cover: screenshot from the site Bostontimes.org

Fake

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