In April 2025, reports circulated online that the first lady of Ukraine purchased from Prince Harry’s wife an outfit that his mother once wore. The purchase price was allegedly almost $3 million. We verified the authenticity of this story.
April 25 Telegram channel «Sanya in Florida”(465,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) reported: “Zelensky’s wife bought a dress from Meghan Markle that previously belonged to Princess Diana. The cost of the new thing is $2.9 million. The sale took place during Prince Harry’s visit to Lviv in early April. Officially it was a humanitarian visit, but sources close to the royal family indicate that the trip had another, commercial motivation. Experts attribute the sale to the dire financial situation of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Their Netflix show's ratings are down and their contract renewals are slim. And Zelenskaya seems happy to become closer to the royal family in this way. Previously she performed in the British Parliament and went to the coronation of Charles III.” The publication was accompanied by a short video.
According to the TGStat service, more than 240 Russian-language posts about Zelenskaya’s purchase appeared on Telegram; in total, such posts received about 2.2 million views. Channels wrote about thisUncle Slava"(159,000 views), "Putin on Telegram"(154,000), "Russia now"(150,000), Zergulio (131,000), "Voice of Mordor"(105,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(103,000), "Kirill Fedorov / War history weapons"(94,000), "The goat screamed" (88,000) and "Tsargrad-TV"(84,000). Similar publications are found in “VKontakte", X, "Odnoklassniki" And LiveJournal, as well as on Rutube and websites News.ru, "Southern Federal" And "Podolyak" Such messages have also gone viral in English: for example, in X posts by Concerned Citizen users (@BGatesIsaPyscho), Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) and Johnny Midnight (@its_The_Dr) received 8.3 million, 6.6 million and 4.6 million views, respectively.
At least three slightly different versions of the viral video are being circulated. In two versions of the recording, English subtitles are presented, and in the third, Russian-language text is superimposed on top of them. The duration also varies: the longest video lasts just over 2 minutes, the shortest – 74 seconds. A man's voice is heard off-screen and says in English:
“Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, earlier this month caused unannounced visit to Ukraine. This move not only surprised the public, but also upset members of the British royal family (according to rumors, this saddened Prince William. Prince Harry's older brother was reportedly angry at officials who denied him a similar trip. — Approx. ed.). Initially, his visit was presented as a humanitarian action to support war victims and protect wounded veterans. However, new information gave rise to speculation that Harry’s trip also had a secondary, private purpose.
According to sources close to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle recently sold the iconic "revenge dress"Princess Diana to Ukraine's First Lady Elena Zelenskaya for a staggering $2.9 million. The black silk cocktail dress worn by Diana in 1994 on the same evening Prince Charles admitted in infidelity, is one of the most recognizable symbols of royal disobedience and personal rebirth.
Insiders say the sale was driven in part by financial considerations. Meghan Markle's contract with Netflix expires in 2025, and executives at the streaming giant are concerned about the less-than-enthusiastic reviews about her new cooking show (meaning "Love, Megan". - Editor's note. And Prince Harry recently moved away from the affairs of his charity Sentebale due to its deteriorating financial condition.
Royal family expert Richard Fitzwilliams suggests that the sale of Princess Diana's dress could be another overt attack by Meghan on her husband's relatives: "This is, of course, obvious revenge, and very unpleasant - especially in relation to William, in relation to King Charles." The Duchess of Sussex has previously claimed that there has long been a conspiracy at Buckingham Palace against her and that she feels like a scapegoat (this is a retelling quotes lawyer Markle and her friend. — Approx. ed.).
Princess Diana's "Revenge Dress" was originally sold at a charity auction in 1997. It was purchased by a Scottish couple and was kept in a bank vault for years until it was given to Meghan Markle in 2019 as a symbolic gesture, as Meghan was often featured in the press. compared with Diana.
A replica of the dress is still on display at the Style Icons Museum in Ireland. Although Elena Zelenskaya's motives for purchasing Princess Diana's "revenge dress" remain unclear, the purchase could be seen as part of her strategy to get closer to the British royal family. In 2023 Zelenskaya visited coronation of Charles III, and in 2024 stated about his closeness to Queen Camilla after the audience at Clarence House."
Throughout the viral video, the logo of the British tabloid The Sun appears in the upper right corner. This publication is also mentioned in the video itself: for example, it demonstrates cover one of the newspaper issues from 1994 and a screenshot articles, posted on the tabloid website in 2025. However, none of the publications given at the beginning of this analysis provides a link to the original source, and “Verified” did not find a similar video on any website The Sun, nor in his social networks.
Reputable English-language media did not write about Zelenskaya’s supposed expensive purchase. Nevertheless News.ru claims, without citing a source, that the story was reported by The Nation. One might think that we are talking about an American magazine, but about the sale of Princess Diana's dress on April 24 wrote website of the same name Nigerian newspapers (thenationonlineng.net). On the same day, a similar note was published on the website of the Independent, but not the British, but another Nigerian publication (independent.ng). Moreover, on The Nation next to the title there is mark Sponsored Post, that is, material about the first lady of Ukraine was published there on a paid basis. This Nigerian publication has already been mentioned in another parsing “Verified”: in 2023 they wrote that during a visit to New York Zelenskaya spent more than $1 million on jewelry, but the news turned out to be fake.
As for the original source of the viral video, its earliest appearance (among the publications tracked by “Verified”) took place on the social network X, where it was posted on April 24 at 19:04 Moscow time by the user mentioned at the beginning of the analysis @BGatesIsaPyscho. His tweet featured an almost two-minute video, and the full version 10 minutes later. shared also by the one mentioned above @its_The_Dr. Both users support pro-Kremlin narratives and have already were mentioned in our materials as distributors fakes. In RuNet, the video was first reported on by Telegram channels, which Fine familiar to our regular readers: “The goat screamed" (April 24 at 20:13, 74-second version) and "Voice of Mordor"(April 25 at 14:01, full version with Russian subtitles).
There are other signs of falsification in the video. Thus, fact checkers from the Lead Stories project found outthat the quote from royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams in the video was cut from interview, which he gave to the GB News channel back in 2022. Then he shared his opinion about the show “Harry and Meghan”, and not about the purchase of Princess Diana’s dress, which Zelenskaya allegedly made two and a half years later.
In a conversation with Lead Stories, Fitzwilliams called the video being dissected a fake and stated that The Sun never asked him for a comment for such a publication. “It is a particularly appalling feature of today's world that such a disgusting fake could appear online, with a video that The Sun never published and my comment taken from another source. The bad taste of its content speaks for itself. It is unfortunate that the perpetrators of such an outrageous act cannot be brought to justice,” Fitzwilliams said.
Elizabeth Morton, head of communications at The Sun, also confirmed in a letter to Lead Stories that a fake video with the tabloid’s logo is being distributed online.
The black dress that Zelenskaya allegedly bought developed Greek designer Christina Stambolian. At the end of June 1994, Princess Diana put it on him for a charity dinner organized by Vanity Fair magazine at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Countsthat the Princess of Wales chose this revealing outfit in revenge on her husband Prince Charles (now King Charles III) - shortly before this he publicly admitted to treason. In 1997, at an auction in New York, the dress was sold for more than £39,000. It was purchased by Scottish businessman Graham MacKenzie, who and his wife planned to use the exhibit at charity events to raise donations.
Since then, there have been no reports in the press that the dress was passed on to Markle. On the contrary, some resources reportthat the Mackenzies still own the outfit, which they keep in a bank safe. However, the expensive rarity still appeared in public from time to time to raise funds for charity. At the same time, the viral video claims that a copy of the dress is kept in the Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge, Ireland. According to website museum and posts on his social networks, the iconic exhibit has been exhibited there since 2012. For example, in 2017 he became part of the exhibition "Diana: A Fashionable Legacy", dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the princess's death. Back in 2010, Stambolyan (according to the designer, out of boredom) created replica of the outfit, and the following year a copy was sold at auction for £18,000. According to magazine articles Hello! and tabloid The Daily Mail, it is this duplicate that is kept in the Irish Museum. However, the institution itself declares, which exhibits only originals.
Thus, the first lady of Ukraine did not buy a dress from Meghan Markle that belonged to Princess Diana. Proof of this story were publications on African news sites, one of which clearly did it for money, as well as a video with the logo of the tabloid The Sun, whose representative called the video a fake. The expert whose words were quoted on the recording also stated that the video was fabricated. This fake is another link in a long chain false reports about the expensive purchases of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, his family and entourage.
Cover photo: social networks / collage “Verified”
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