At the beginning of April 2025, Russian media and Telegram channels reported a major investment by the Ukrainian president in the mining industry of South Africa. We have verified the veracity of this news.

Ahead of his official visit to South Africa on April 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly acquired a 51% stake in Northam Platinum, one of the key local companies mining platinum and other precious metals. The transaction amount allegedly amounted to $1.6 billion. Most of these publications are accompanied by a report from the South African television channel SABC News, which, among other things, talks about the “hidden purpose” of Zelensky’s visit - to talk with Northam Platinum employees, from whom the news of the change of ownership allegedly caused a mixed reaction. The video even includes a story from one of the workers who allegedly heard about the deal.

They wrote about this “Arguments and facts", News.ru and other publications, as well as numerous Telegram channels, including “Live broadcast"(824,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sanya in Florida"(528,000), "Observer"(179,000), "Uncle Slava"(175,000), "Russia now» (166,000), etc..

Viral video. Source: Telegram

In February 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa invited Vladimir Zelensky to visit the country, and this invitation was accepted. However, on March 20, approximately two weeks before the viral story began to spread, the South African side reported, that at the request of Kyiv the visit was postponed from April 10 to April 24.

Company Northam Platinum, indeed, a major South African miner of platinum group metals. As indicated on the company's website, as of the end of June 2024, about 69% of shares belonged individuals and legal entities from South Africa.

“Verified” did not find any confirmation in authoritative sources (including the Northam Platinum website) of the news that Zelensky has become the new controlling shareholder of the enterprise. On the official resources of the SABC News channel (website, YouTube channel, accounts in Instagram, X, Facebook And TikTok) there is no video referenced by Russian-language resources. However, the authors of the video themselves also rely on materials from another media: at the 13th second, a screenshot of a publication by a certain NewsDay resource about the investment of the Ukrainian president is visible.

NewsDay - Zimbabwean newspaper, published since 2010. On March 27, it appeared on her website article about Zelensky’s purchase of a 51% stake in Northam Platinum, which completely repeats later viral messages. However, it does not provide any additional details or references. But on April 7, the content of the article is radically has changed, and now at the same address (containing the old headline) you can read a reprint of a Reuters article about US President Donald Trump's tariff policy. Moreover, fact checkers from the Lead Stories project checked original text using an AI detector from the company Hive and found that with a probability of 99.8% it was generated using a neural network.

The creation of a viral video also involved the use of artificial intelligence. In particular, the worker’s speech at the end of the report raises questions - at some moments the words spoken clearly do not correspond to the movements of the man’s lips. “Verified” analyzed this part of the audio track using the service DeepFake-o-meter, which was developed by researchers at the University at Buffalo to identify AI content. The results of the analysis showed that the worker’s voice was highly likely generated by the neural network.

We also contacted Northam Platinum representatives. Shereelee Lakmidas, director of strategic communications, in response to Verified's request for comment, stated: “All media articles, videos and social media posts claiming that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is acquiring a stake in Northam Platinum are fake news. Northam confirms that our share allocation remains unchanged."

On April 4, when the viral video began to spread across social networks, refutation SABC News also spoke. The TV channel said it did not publish or disseminate the news, which it called fake.

Thus, everything suggests that reports about Zelensky’s investment in a platinum company in South Africa are untrue and based on falsified materials from African media. This news was denied both by the company itself and by the TV channel, whose logo was used to create the video using neural networks. The content of the article shown in the video was completely changed shortly after the news went viral. The process of its distribution began on the night of April 4, Moscow time, the earliest “Verified” publication discovered was fast by X Johnny Midnight (4.3 million views). This account has already been caught fact checkers on the spread of false information about Zelensky. A few hours later the news was picked up by Russian propaganda outlets. Telegram channels.

This is not the first time that reports of expensive purchases by Zelensky, his immediate family and the companies he owns after the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine have appeared on pro-Kremlin resources. “Verified” has already examined similar messages about transactions with Charles III's mansion in Great Britain, villas in the USA, Egypt And in the Caribbean, bank in France, winery in Italy, hotel in Courchevel etc. According to some of these news, the Ukrainian president has a special weakness for the legacy of the Third Reich - he allegedly acquired Goebbels estate, and also mountain house And Hitler's car. All these news turned out to be fakes, and the style of their creators in many cases was the same: “revelatory” photo, audio or video materials were legalized under the guise of investigations by foreign journalists. It later became clear that this evidence was falsified.

Cover photo: president.gov.ua