In July 2025, information spread on social networks that the descendants of the President of the USSR were making money from an alcoholic drink named after the President of Ukraine. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
On July 8, X went viral on social media. fast, the author of which wrote: “Photo: M. Gorbachev’s granddaughters Ksenia and Anastasia. They live in Germany. Since 2022, they have been producing and selling Zelensky vodka. Even non-drinkers buy vodka with this name in Germany. They send a large percentage of their proceeds to finance the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” The publication was accompanied by a photograph of two women and, at the time of writing this analysis, had received 137,000 views and more than 400 reposts. Similar posts also appeared on Facebook (1, 2, 3, 4).
The photo used in the viral posts was done back in 2011, on charity concert in honor of the 80th birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev. Indeed, it depicts the granddaughters of the Soviet leader Ksenia Gorbacheva and Anastasia Virganskaya.
About Zelensky vodka back in December 2022 wrote pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. Although some Some of them claimed that it was produced by the Office of the President of Ukraine; in fact, a drink under this brand was launched by the charity project Vodka4Peace. It was founded by the Ukrainian Anastasia Rosinina and the Swiss Tobias Reichmuth and Georgia von Gleichen shortly after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. All proceeds from the sale of vodka were planned to be transferred to support Ukraine. “We set up the company in just eight days and have already donated almost £30,000 to a children’s hospital in Kyiv and an NGO that supports low-income Ukrainians with children,” told von Gleichen in April 2022. Charity vodka was sold both on the project website and in alcohol stores in Germany, Switzerland and the UK. Project planned sell a million bottles a year, but now it's website not working, pages in X And Facebook have not been updated since the summer of 2022, and in most European online stores where Zelensky vodka was presented, it is no longer available.
“Verified” did not find any mention in open sources that Ksenia Gorbacheva or Anastasia Virganskaya participated in the creation and activities of Vodka4Peace. The source for the publications that appeared in July 2025, apparently, was one published back in February article Life.ru publications. It said that Gorbachev’s granddaughters have been living in Germany since the 2010s, Virganskaya is listed as the managing director of two companies related to cargo transportation, and Gorbacheva runs the ViniGrandi collection wine store in Berlin. “After the start of the SVO, the social networks of Ksenia Gorbacheva’s store were not only marked with several anti-war posts. The management of ViniGrandi reported on the organization of a sale of vodka with a yellow-black label called Zelensky - from the caption to the publication one can understand that the proceeds were planned to be transferred to Ukraine,” wrote Life.ru. However, the tabloid did not report anything that Gorbachev could be connected with the production of this vodka.
ViniGrandi GmbH was registered in 2016, initially Ksenia Gorbacheva managed it together with her stepfather Andrei Trukhachev. In 2022, Trukhachev left the project, his place took Filippo Maria Guidotti (presumably Life.ru, Gorbacheva’s husband). At the time of writing, the analysis of the assortment of strong alcoholic drinks on the ViniGrandi vodka website no at all, however, judging by the store’s Instagram profile, in April 2022 Zelensky vodka will actually be there was sold. Product was in stock and in the online store, the corresponding page is currently unavailable.
Thus, Gorbachev’s granddaughters have nothing to do with the production of Zelensky vodka, although one of them sold such a drink in her store in the spring of 2022. Contrary to viral posts, profits from the sale of this vodka went to charitable purposes, and not to help the Ukrainian army.
Cover photo: screenshot of ViniGrandi's Instagram page
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