DISINFO: Zelenskyy bought British mansion from King Charles III for 20 million pounds
SUMMARY
British newspaper the London Crier reports that the Highgrove House mansion, which Prince Charles used as a country residence from 1980, after 44 years in the ownership of the Crown, was sold to the President of Ukraine, along with the surrounding park. Grant Harrold, former butler to the King, claimed that, according to his data, the sale transaction was completed on 29 February 2024, during the visit of Zelenskyy's wife to the UK. The sale of Highgrove House was also confirmed by the maintenance staff of the former royal residence. Most of them were fired on 21 March 2024.
RESPONSE
No evidence is provided to back the claim, which is demonstrably false. There is no record of Grant Harrold, supposed to have been King Charles’ butler for many years, or any other member of the King’s service or entourage having talked about this topic. No serious outlet has reported on this baseless allegation, which has been spread exclusively by pro-Kremlin outlets and social media accounts.
The only source for this disinformation story is a supposedly British outlet created a few days before its publication called the London Crier, which has been denounced by members of BBC Verify -the verification team of the British public broadcasting company- as “a Russian disinformation website that uses AI to publish totally fake and fabricated stories about Ukraine”· Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation has also identified the whole story as bogus.
This story appears to be part of a wide scale pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign aiming to portray the Ukrainian leadership as corrupt, with the ultimate goal of eroding international support for Kyiv’s defence against Russia’s aggression. This campaign has frequently resorted to invented stories and forged accusations against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his family and close associates.
The tactic of "laundring" disinformation and made-up lies to make them look credible is also researched and documented here.
See other examples, such as claims that Zelenskyy’s fortune is worth at least USD 2 billion, that Zelenskyy's mother-in-law uses war money to buy luxury houses, that Olena Zelenska spent more than 1 million dollars on jewellery with EU money, that Zelenskyy's associates stole weapons money because they believed Ukraine will cease to exist, or that Zelenskyy and the Kyiv junta need to continue the war against Russia to enrich themselves with Western aid.