No, Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t buy a villa in Florida

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky buy a house in Florida? And did he get American citizenship? Those are the rumors circulating on social media along with a couple of photos. However, the villa that appears in the photos is still up for sale and the certificate of nationality is fake, making this the latest example of fake news stories implying that Ukrainian officials are using international aid money for personal purposes.

Issued on: 18/12/2023 – 16:42

4 min

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, pro-Russian social media accounts have been sharing fake news items about how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been squandering international aid money by buying luxury properties around the world. The latest iteration on this theme is the rumour spreading that Zelensky bought a villa in Florida and, while he was at it, got US citizenship.

If you only have a minute

Social media accounts have been sharing the fake claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bought a villa in Florida and got US citizenship. The posts featured an image of a villa and another image of what looks like a US naturalisation document. However, the real estate firm managing the sale of the property said that it has not yet been sold. We located the name of the actual owner of the property, a US-based banker, by consulting the public register in the county of St. Jones, Florida. The image of the fake certificate of naturalisation is actually a form available for download online. Someone then added a cropped version of an official photo of the Ukrainian president.

The fact check, in detail

“Zelensky’s new Florida mansion, was this bought with our tax dollars?” asks an X user. Their post features four images of an enormous villa, on the seashore, as well as a document said to be Volodymyr Zelensky’s certificate of US naturalisation. Social media users have been sharing these images, claiming that the Ukrainian president has made a plan to flee his country for the United States.

This is a screengrab of an X post shared on December 13, claiming that the Ukrainian president bought a villa in Florida. © Observers

The claim was shared on X, in tweets like this one, which garnered nearly 10 million views. It was also shared on Facebook.

A home belonging to an American banker

We flipped the images around and ran them through a reverse image search (click here to find out how), finding this villa on the American real estate marketplace, Zillow. The villa is located in Ponte Vedra Beach, in Northern Florida. It is selling for nearly $11 million (roughly equivalent to €10.08 million).

Our team reached out to Compass, the company managing the sale. They confirmed to us that the property hadn’t been sold yet and, thus, that it still belonged to Daniel and Carol Wildermuth.

It’s possible to find the name of the owners by looking at a public registry listing the names of homeowners in St. Jones County, Florida, where the property is located.

By looking at the public records, we found that the villa belongs to Daniel Wildermuth, a banker based in Atlanta, and Carol Wildermuth, who bought the property in 2019 for $6.3 million (€5.52 million).

This is the country property registry from St. Jones, Florida, which gives the names of property owners. © Observers

American journalist Lachlan Markay reported that the fake information seems to have come from the website DC Weekly, which has a lot of pro-Russian content. The author of the article, Jessica Devlin, who is presented as an “acclaimed journalist”, doesn’t have any presence online except for this site and her profile photo actually belongs to a woman named Judy Batalion.

The story about Zelensky buying this villa in Florida seems to have originated from a “journalist” apparently named Jessica Devlin. Her profile picture, however, actually shows another real woman named Judy Batalion. © Observers

A fake naturalisation document

As for the document said to be the US naturalisation certificate of the Ukrainian President, it actually isn’t an official document at all. We found a model of the form available for download online. The image of Zelensky that features on the document is a cropped version of a photo available on the Ukrainian president’s official website.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the FRANCE 24 Observers team has debunked a number of fake news items, all claiming that the Ukrainians are squandering international aid money.

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