In April 2024, the media and Telegram channels reported that the President of Ukraine spent £ 20 million on the acquisition from the English royal family of an old estate. We checked the veracity of such publications.

April 3-4, Russian media, including "Vesti.ru","Russian newspaper","Komsomolskaya Truth","Arguments and facts","Tsargrad" Sputnik, "Moscow Komsomolets" And Pravda.ru, reported that Vladimir Zelensky acquired elite real estate in the UK. The authors of the notes claimed that the Ukrainian president acquired the Highgrow House estate from King Charles III in the County of Gloucester. It is clarified that the monarch owned a mansion since 1980, the deal allegedly cost Zelensky about £ 20 million and was formed through the mediation of his wife Elena during her visit to the United Kingdom at the end of February. At the same time, some publications noted that the information was based on rumors, while others argued that the information was obtained as part of a journalistic investigation under open data.

In Telegram channels, the news began to spread a day earlier. According to the TGSTAT service, the posts of buying Zelensky in the UK in total gained more than 6 million views. Among the most popular are publications in channels "Live broadcast"(936,000 views at the time of writing this analysis),"Operation Z: Warrixes of Russian Spring"(512 000),"Gossip"(343,000),"Observer"(228 000),"Thirteenth"(197 000), Voblya (178 000), "Putin in Telegram"(177 000),"Sheikh Tamir"(156 000), Rus_criminal (144,000), "Mordor's voice"(139 000),"Ivan Utenkov"(139 000),"Ukraine.ru"(129,000),"Kirill Fedorov / War History Weapons"(117 000),"Alexander Semchenko"(111 000),"Ostashko! Important"(106 000) and"Pool N3"(103,000).

The message became viral and outside the Runet. In particular, in English they spoke about him in verified profile Russian Embassy in South Africa. Also, about allegedly acquired British real estate Zelensky was written on French, Dutch, Italian and other languages

Both the media and Telegram channels in their publications referred to a note, Outdoor In the publication of London Crier in early April (the exact date on the site is not indicated). The anonymous author of this material writes that although the Buckingham Palace did not issue applications for a deal with Haigrow House, "there are many details indicating that the sale was completed in late February-early March 2024." In the article itself, this detail is given only by one - a commentary on a certain Grant Harold, supposedly a butler in this estate in 2004-2011. He said that at least six people working in the mansion were informed about the termination of contracts from March 21.

A four -minute video is also attached to the note, published On YouTube. The recording mainly consists of cutting from photos, videos, stock images and screenshots, which is accompanied by a sunbringing voice (presumably, a man pronouncing the text, the author of the investigation, appears in the video for just a couple of seconds). Basically, the video content repeats the above in the article, but the video completes the inscription “Since February 2022, the United Kingdom allocated almost £ 12 billion for comprehensive support of Ukraine. On January 12, 2024, the government announced funding in the amount of another £ 2.5 billion for 2024–2025. ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jkle7w2evm

Until April 2024, London Crier was not mentioned in any major media as the source of news or journalistic investigations. There is no section “About itself” on the website of the publication (instead of it - a description of the template in WordPress, with which the resource is issued), and the “Rules for use” is given a set of words on Latin, usually used by designers when creating templates. Notes on the site are published with signatures like Brian.tran12 or OWEN.COOK14. The author of the article on the purchase of Zelensky estates in Gloucheschire is indicated at all Admin.

According to Nominet data, registering sites in the domain zone .UK, the website Londoncrier.co.uk, where a note was posted on the change of Highgrow House owner, appeared Only March 26, 2024. To the same results Curses And the study of web address using the Who.is. At the same time, the “basement” of the London Crier website says that the publication has been released since 1863, that is, it is assumed that it decided to start its site more than 160 years after the foundation. Moreover, this media does not have accounts in social networks (icons with logo on the site are leading to the pages of the creator of the template for WordPress).

Project "Bota lock" Analyzed And other data about this resource. It turned out that Londoncrier.co.uk uses the same DNS servers as the Sanfranchron.com website, created in March 2024 and pretending to be the page of the American newspaper San Francisco Chronicle. Through this (and one more) non -existent media at the end of March to the information space He was thrown The fake that 300 kg of cocaine, allegedly received during the visit of the Ukrainian leader to the inauguration of the new Argentinean president, were taken out from Argentina.

As the Snopes factory project found out, as of April 3, at least one article on the London Crier website, supposedly a British publication with more than a century and a half history, was written In Russian (now the publication is not available). Moreover, “verified” randomly chose and studied the names of three files with photos that are used to illustrate notes (1, 2, 3). All these names coincided with the headlines of articles published at the end of March on the website of Gazeta.ru (1, 2, 3) and accompanied by the same pictures. We found the same feature earlier at The Boston Times, which served as the primary source for many viral publications about Zelensky and Argentine cocaine.

The London Crier note has been published on March 31, 2024 on the Sam Murphy YouTube channel with 310 subscribers. He was registered February 5, until the end of March, remained empty. On March 30–31, three videos appeared on the channel at once: about real estate in the property of Charles III, about the participation of his niece, Princess Eugene in the event dedicated to Easter and about the alleged purchase of the Royal estate Zelensky. All three videos are voiced by different voices, however, as a photo of the profile in the channel, a screenshot from the video about the purchase of Highgrow House was used-it depicts a man who presumably reads the ordinance text. Services for the opposite search for images and the search for people captured in the pictures did not give any results. Probably the author of the channel was generated by a neural network (for example, to this conclusion They came Experts surveyed by The Independent).

In fact, the only evidence that is given in the article and the video is the words of the butler Grant Harold, who, claimed to work more than ten years ago in Haigrow House for then Prince Charles. Harold - Quite famous In the UK, man. After completing the service at the court, he began to conduct a relatively popular blog about the intricacies of etiquette, as well as to act in a television show. Representatives of the ex-Dvoretsky in the comments to the agency DPA, TV channel France 24 and the newspaper The Independent They called the statements attributed to Harold in the article by London Crier "completely false."

Finally, the factor from the Italian Open project ordered on a specialized website belonging to the Great Britain government, an extract on Highgrow House. In the document indicatedthat as of April 5, 2024, Prince William was the owner of the estate. The mansion went to the heir to the British throne from his father along with the titles when Charles III became king after the death of his mother Elizabeth II.

Thus, the messages that have been dispersed through the media and social networks, as if Zelensky bought a mansion worth about £ 20 million from Charles III, are based on publications of the site, without a uniform basis that outstanding British media. This resource, judging by the evidence, is included in the network of the same forthcoming publications that distribute the pro -Kremlin propaganda. The certificate of the transaction used in the note was falsified.

Prochremple resources are not the first to use this scheme to spread fakes about elite real estate, allegedly purchased by the family of the Ukrainian president in different parts of the world. In December 2023, the publications that Zelensky acquired the Goebbels estate near Berlin, as well as villas in the USA and Egypt, became viral. How then found out “Checked”, to promote all three plots at first on almost empty YouTube channels, the allegedly revelation of the insider or the story of the journalist-investigator was placed, then the retelling of these rollers was relayed by little-known editions or resources that mimicate under the media, and the Russian media and supporting the Kremlin were referred to their notes and already supported their notes. Bloggers.

Photo on the cover: Office of the President of Ukraine