In September 2025, Russian media and Telegram channels reported: from a working trip to France at the beginning of the month, the Ukrainian president brought his wife wardrobe items selected by a stylist in luxury stores. We have verified the accuracy of this news.
It is alleged that during a visit to France in September 2025, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky paid for the purchase of clothes, shoes and jewelry for his wife Elena in the amount of more than €1 million. This was allegedly stated by the Parisian stylist of Moroccan origin Amina el-Mansouri, who advised the first lady remotely. “I must tell you that this was the most expensive image that I have put together for a client in my entire career,” admitted el-Mansouri, who previously worked with actress Marion Cotillard, model Tina Kunakey and other celebrities. As evidence that accompanied many publications, a video of an interview with a stylist was used.
Excerpt from this interview showed on the Rossiya-1 TV channel, they wrote about him in “Rossiyskaya newspaper", as well as in numerous Telegram channels, among which - "Sanya in Florida"(474,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Evil proof"(172,000), "Uncle Slava" (167,000), "Putin on Telegram" (142,000) and "Observer"(118,000).
At the beginning of September 2025, Zelensky visited Paris, where he took part in the meeting "Coalitions of the willing" - a group of countries led by Great Britain and France, seeking to ensure the achievement of lasting peace in Ukraine, in particular allowing the sending of peacekeeping forces to the country after the signing of a peace agreement with Russia. First Lady Elena Zelenskaya did not accompany her husband on the trip - on these dates she was on a working visit to Chernigov And Kievskaya areas.
“Verified” did not find any reports in authoritative French, Ukrainian and international sources that during his visit to Paris Zelensky was shopping in the interests of his wife.
The vast majority of Russian resources that have written about this refer to the article “Success Story: From a Small Village to the Parisian Fashion Scene,” published on September 18 in a Tunisian online publication Le Quotidien. On the same day, identical text was published on the Malian website Maliweb.net, and its slightly revised version is on the website Mali Actu. A day earlier, similar material appeared on the Algerian website Shihab Press. The articles tell the story of a girl from a small Moroccan village who, from a young age, was interested in traditional Arab clothing, moved to France, graduated from the local fashion institute IFM, got a job as a sales assistant at Chanel, and then became a personal shopping assistant. Allegedly, today Amina el-Mansouri (in the Russia 1 report she was called Amilya) is a famous stylist who collaborates with many fashion houses and celebrities. Three out of four articles contain link to the video version of the interview published on the YouTube channel of fashion critic Ali Shehabi.
“Verified” found no traces on the Internet of the existence of a famous Parisian stylist named Amina el-Mansouri - neither in specialized publications, nor on thematic websites, nor on Instagram, LinkedIn and other social networks. All information about el-Mansouri is limited to an interview on YouTube and the four above-mentioned articles published on September 17 and 18 in little-known African publications and containing the same information. At the same time, in Morocco, the supposed homeland of el-Mansouri, nothing was written about her.
It is noteworthy that under the article from the site Maliweb.net The author's name is Abdu Ali. Judging by earlier publications on the same resource, he specializes in completely different topics. Among his notes there are materials with the headings “Ukraine starts wars under the guise of fighting hunger" And "Ukraine is France's military weapon in Africa"
The video interview looks no less strange, published on the YouTube channel @AliShehabi-c9v in two parts (about 100 and 2000 views, respectively) on September 17 and 18. Despite the title "Part 2", the second video is a cut from the beginning and end of the first video. These are the only posts on the channel, which was created in March 2024 and has only four subscribers. This, however, is not surprising considering that its owner, “fashion critic” Ali Shehabi, is completely unknown outside of this channel.
Facial recognition service PimEyes I couldn’t find a photograph on the Internet of a person with an appearance identical to the appearance of Amina el-Mansouri from an interview on YouTube. Moreover, it seems that in this video, as well as in the portraits from the Mali Actu website and with publication pages Facebook shows three different women.
“Verified” analyzed the interview using a service to identify AI content DeepFake-o-meter. Several audio and video detectors immediately assessed the likelihood of using neural networks to create this video as almost one hundred percent.
After the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, messages about Elena Zelenskaya’s expensive purchases appear with enviable regularity on pro-Kremlin resources. In particular, “Verified” has already analyzed similar publications about her spending in Parisian And New York boutiques, about expensive outfit at the funeral of the Pope and about the acquisition princess diana dresses for $2.9 million, and the evidence included testimonies from sellers. However, in terms of the level of spending attributed to her, the first lady of Ukraine is noticeably inferior to her husband - at different times it was reported that Vladimir Zelensky acquired mansion of Charles III in Great Britain, villas in the USA, Egypt And in the Caribbean, bank in France, winery in Italy, hotel in Courchevel, mining company in South Africa etc. According to some of these news stories, the Ukrainian president has a particular soft spot for the legacy of the Third Reich - he allegedly became the owner Goebbels estates, and also mountain house And Hitler's car. All these news turned out to be fakes, and the handwriting of their creators in many cases was the same: supposedly revealing photo, audio or video materials were “legalized” under the guise of YouTube videos or articles in the media of third world countries. It later became clear that this evidence was falsified.
Thus, the materials that talk about the purchase of clothes and accessories worth €1.1 million for Elena Zelenskaya have all the signs of being fake. First, a video generated by a neural network with an interview with an allegedly popular but in reality non-existent stylist appeared in an empty YouTube channel, and then identical articles based on it were published on several little-known African sites. Soon a fragment of the same interview spread on the social network X, to which were added taken from open sources photographs of goods allegedly purchased by Zelenskaya. In particular, a video with French subtitles was published on the page @LoetitiaH (106,000 views), and with English ones - on the page @MaimunkaNews (864,000 views). Both account already were caught fact checkers on the spread of false information. Only the next morning video published in the Russian-language segment of Telegram.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
Read on topic:
- Is it true that Elena Zelenskaya spent €40,000 on boutique shopping during her visit to Paris?
- Is it true that Zelenskaya spent more than $1 million on jewelry during her visit to New York?
- Is it true in the video that Elena Zelenskaya’s outfit at the Pope’s funeral cost $180,000?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
