Is it true that Zelensky bought a car that belonged to Hitler?

In October 2024, media and Telegram channels reported that the President of Ukraine purchased a black Mercedes-Benz, which was driven by the leader of Nazi Germany. We have verified the accuracy of these publications.

October 8 Telegram channel «Voice of Mordor” (115,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), citing the Seattle Tribune, wrote: “The car, which belonged to Hitler, was used by him in a parade in Berlin after the surrender of France in 1940. After the end of the war, the US Army confiscated the car. In 2018, it surfaced at auction in the United States, but was not sold because the bid of $7 million was lower than expected. At the beginning of October, the car was spotted in the center of Kyiv; Zelensky arrived in it at the building of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine on the street. Bankova, 11. This happened shortly after Zelensky returned from an American tour, during which he signed shells and met with White House representatives. During his trip, the United States announced a new aid package for Ukraine worth $8 billion. The amount Zelensky paid for the Mercedes-Benz 770K, previously owned by the Nazi dictator, is unknown, but, according to experts, could be about $15 million.” As evidence, the authors provide a video showing a photo of this car standing near the office of the President of Ukraine.

At the time of writing this analysis, according to the TGStat service, at least 550 Russian-language Telegram channels reported about the proposed purchase of Zelensky, whose posts in total received more than 4 million views. Among the most popular are channel posts "Sanya in Florida"(494,000 views), "Russia now"(201,000), "Observer"(183,000), "Uncle Slava" (173,000), "Putin on Telegram"(164,000), Voblya (130,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(122,000), Rus_criminal (121,000), Zergulio (117,000), "Kirill Fedorov / War history weapons"(101,000), "Ostashko! Important" (96,000) and "Tsargrad-TV"(73,000). The newspapers also reported on this story.Moskovsky Komsomolets" And "Arguments and facts", edition "FederalPress"and numerous public pages on VKontakte (examples here, here And here).

Most of the resources mentioned above in their notes and posts referred to the site of what is supposed to be an American publication Seattle Tribune. There really published material under the heading “Hitler’s parade car was bought by Ukrainian leader Zelensky.” The site does not directly indicate when this news was posted, but according to others notes, this happened on October 7th. In its text, the Seattle Tribune also provides a one-and-a-half-minute video clip, which was accompanied by Russian-language subtitles on RuNet:

"This is a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K Grosser Offener Tourenwagen, often called a super Mercedes. It was commissioned by Adolf Hitler, created for him and used by him. In July 1940 it was used by Hitler in the victory parade, passing in Berlin after the defeat of France. The Nazi dictator's Mercedes-Benz, captured by the US Army after the war, is one of only five surviving vehicles. This particular car was put up for auction in 2018 in Scottsdale, Arizona, but did not sell because the $7 million bid did not meet the minimum price. He was later spotted in the super-rich Seattle suburb where Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates live nearby, according to the Seattle Times. Later, representatives of the auction house announced that they had finally found a private buyer. According to several Ukrainian Telegram channels, Vladimir Zelensky was recently seen getting out of this car in Kyiv, directly opposite the building on Bankova, 11, where located office of the President of Ukraine. This happened just a couple of days after his return from his successful diplomatic mission. trips in the USA. United States announced about a new aid package for Ukraine in the amount of $8 billion during Zelensky’s visit to Washington. It remains unclear who the mystery seller is and how much Mr. Zelensky paid for the Nazi dictator's car, although the estimated sale price is believed to be around $15 million. It also makes one wonder why anyone would buy this relic that had such a dark history to begin with.”

This video uses visual materials and excerpts from articles from various media. For example, it shows a video from the British tabloid Daily Mail with archival footage. December 2017 edition reportedthat next month an auction will be held in Arizona for the sale of a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K Grosser Offener Tourenwagen, a German super-Mercedes commissioned by Hitler and used by him during victory parades, including over France. According to the publication CNBC, at the end of World War II, the car was confiscated by the American military, and by January 2018, only five of these cars remained in private collections and museums. The identity of the owner of the Mercedes put up for auction was not disclosed at that time, although in 2009 the German media claimedthat the last time it was bought by an unnamed Russian billionaire for several million euros and Hitler’s car went to Moscow.

Also in the Seattle Tribune video with reference to the Arizona edition Azcentral It is said that the Mercedes-Benz 770K was not sold at auction in January 2018 because the $7 million offered for it was below the minimum price set by the anonymous seller. At the same time, a representative of Worldwide Auctioneers clarified that the sale could still take place, and negotiations with the buyer would continue privately. In February 2018, The Seattle Times actually reportedthat a local resident noticed this car in the city of Medina, which located near Seattle (and, indeed, according to American Media, billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have homes there). Worldwide Auctioneers executive Rod Egan told the newspaper at the time that the deal was concluded shortly after the auction, but declined to name the buyer or the sale price due to a non-disclosure agreement. “The final destination is not in this country,” he said. “It’s very, very far away.”

In early 2022, reports emerged that Australian billionaire and politician Clive Palmer had bought Hitler's Mercedes-Benz from a Russian seller for his automobile museum. At the end of February of the same year about this acquisition told The Courier Mail newspaper, specifying that Palmer had been negotiating for two years. In early March, Australian MP Patrick Gorman wrote a letter to Home Secretary Karen Andrews asking her to investigate the alleged deal. The minister, in turn, stated, which “categorically condemns any glorification of Nazi history.” According to Gorman and Andrews, such a deal with the Russian, whose name was not disclosed, could also violate sanctions imposed due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It (the car. - Ed.) has changed hands many times, most recently in 2017, when it was bought by a Russian tycoon for more than $7 million,” - clarified edition of The Times, although the auction mentioned above took place in 2018. Representative of the party founded by Palmer, at first named the whole story is fake, but when asked whether there were ever negotiations about the potential purchase of such a car, he did not give a direct answer. Also a billionaire himself saidthat he did not purchase Hitler's car and that will start legal proceedings against Andrews for "spreading outrageous fake news". “These outrageous lies have caused significant damage to my reputation, and I will bring those responsible to justice through the courts,” stated He. In mid-March in The Courier Mail wrote, that another vintage Mercedes-Benz car was seen on the territory of Palmer's resort. However, Palmer's spokesman again did not directly answer the question of whether Hitler's car was among the billionaire's recent purchases.

The assertion in the second part of the Seattle Tribune video that the president of Ukraine was ever the buyer of this car is not supported by public data. For example, the video says that several Ukrainian Telegram channels wrote that in 2024 Zelensky was spotted getting out of this car in Kyiv. The video shows a screenshot of a post from only one channel - “War is real”, and the Seattle Tribune website does not provide a link to this publication. "Verified" didn't find it There is no such record in the TGStat service database, where you can also view deleted posts. Moreover, using reverse image search in the service TinEye We found out that the photo provided as evidence was assembled from two images. First from the photographs used, which depicts building administration of the Ukrainian President, was made in August 2021. On the second photo, filmed in August 2014 at the Pebble Beach Concours, according to the author's caption, shows another car - a Mercedes-Benz 770K W150 Offener Tourenwagen, produced in 1941.

The Seattle Tribune, according to the US Library of Congress, was created in 1931, but ceased production in the last century. Until 2022, there was also a eponymous blog. “Verified” examined the Seattle Tribune website, which first talked about the acquisition of Hitler’s car by the Ukrainian president, and did not find any notes there that were published before October 7, 2024. According to specialized services, the site seattle-tribune.com was registered just four days earlier, on October 3rd. It does not contain any data on social media or the editorial staff of the Seattle Tribune, and other content reviewed by Verified is slightly modified text from real media outlets. All these factors indicate that the site was created (probably using a neural network) only to spread news about Zelensky.

Experts from NewsGuard, a company that studies the spread of misinformation on the Internet, claimthat the Seattle Tribune is associated with network Russian disinformation sites run by John Mark Dugan, a former American military and police officer now living in Russia. He's already mentioned V debriefings "Checked." According to NewsGuard, Dugan runs a network of more than 170 websites that pretend to be news outlets and are used to promote false claims, including about Zelensky. A BBC Verify journalist came to the same conclusion. Shayan Sardarizadeh. “The same IP addresses, emails, AI texts and videos, modus operandi, etc. There’s just so much evidence left all over the Internet, although I’m not even sure that he (Dugan - Ed.) even cares about the secrecy of operations,” - wrote He. Dugan himself in a commentary to Voice of America said, that before communicating with journalists he did not know about the Seattle Tribune website: “I’ve never heard of it. But I searched and found out that there is a lot of useful information there. A true pillar of journalistic integrity on par with the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC."

Previously, “Verified” analyzed many similar fakes that were distributed according to a similar pattern. Their authors claimed that Zelensky, his wife and associates became the owners of expensive real estate and luxury goods. If you believe these publications, since 2022 the Zelensky couple, in addition to Hitler’s car, have already bought or received for use:

• clothes from Parisian boutiques worth €40,000;
• $1 million Cartier jewelry;
• villa in Egypt for $4.8 million;
• Bugatti Tourbillon car for €4.5 million;
• Goebbels' house in Germany for €8 million;
• 300 kg of cocaine from Argentina;
• mansion in Florida for $20 million;
• mansion formerly owned by King Charles III for £20 million;
• two yachts for $75 million;
• Sting winery in Italy for €75 million;
• casino in Northern Cyprus for £150 million.

The case with Hitler’s car differs from many other similar fakes in that it did not initially spread in the Russian-language Telegram segment, as usually happened before. For example, the Telegram channel “Voice of Mordor” was the first to talk about many of the transactions mentioned above. However, this time, according to TGStat, he was only second - an hour and a half earlier, on October 8 at 12:56 Moscow time, a post mentioning the Seattle Tribune appeared in Telegram channel Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. There, the news about Zelensky’s purchase was called fake. The fact is that before this, many English-language tweets repeating the same fake statement appeared on the social network X. The earliest post that “Verified” could find was published on October 7 at 20:25 in the profile @AlertChannel (4.1 million views) marked “interesting and exclusive.” Then the fake was replicated, in particular, Uncensored USA (@CarlosSimancas, 759,000 views), Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal, 174,000) and Texas Patriot (@Texasbrn, 3.5 million).

The disinformation that Zelensky bought Hitler's car repeats the same narratives as in the case of similar fakes that were circulated earlier. Thus, she portrays the Ukrainian president as a corrupt politician who not only lives beyond his means, but also embezzles financial assistance allocated to Kyiv by Western countries. She also supports the thesis about the “Nazi” leadership of Ukraine, which Russian authorities and propaganda use to justify the invasion of the neighboring country. “The story of Hitler’s car is an obvious element of propaganda for those who seek to undermine Ukraine,” explained Forbes social media analyst Greg Sterling. “But unfortunately, many people are too ignorant or ill-informed to admit this.” More and more Americans seem willing to believe anything that suits their views and prejudices, no matter how implausible or outrageous.” The publication noted that the management of the social network X, where a fake about Hitler’s car was actively disseminated, is doing little to counter such disinformation. “[Large platforms like this] engage in content moderation and fact-checking as a hobby as long as it doesn’t interfere with their core business of generating advertising revenue. Moderation, which should be a legal requirement, is really just PR these days,” concluded Sterling.

Cover photo: collage from social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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2. A very strange movie: Z-channels spent months talking about a fake documentary with Tom Cruise about corruption in the IOC, but the series never became a global sensation