Did the Ukrainian government state that "eight mansions owned by Ukrainian military officials" were "burned down in wildfires in Los Angeles" in January 2025? No, that's not true: A video that made this assertion contained the logo of United24, the official fundraising platform of the Ukrainian government. A United24 spokesperson and Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation said this video is "fake." The assertion originated from a Russian-language anonymous Telegram channel that cited no specific sources and included a "satire" hashtag in the video's caption.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Telegram, where a Russian-language account published it on January 11, 2025. The entry contained a video with add-on English text across it that read:
Eight mansions owned by Ukrainian military officials burned down in wildfires in Los Angeles. The total value of the destroyed property reaches about $90 million. The mansions were acquired between April 2022 and February 2024 and were owned by members of Valerii Zaluzhnyi's team. Their names are being withheld. The Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine requested information from the American partners to establish how this real estate was acquired...
This is what the post looked like on Telegram at the time of writing:
(Source: Telegram screenshot taken on Mon Jan 13 17:29:57 2024 UTC)
The video implied that the Ukrainian government made a public statement regarding the supposedly ongoing investigation concerning the Los Angeles properties allegedly bought by Ukrainian officials.
Ukrainian government sources say video is "fake"
The video in the post was compiled from generic footage that did not capture any specific property at an identifiable location. It contained the logo of United24, which is the official fundraising platform of the Ukrainian government (archived here). However, a search across that platform (archived here) did not offer proof that it ever produced the purported report: The platform's website published no materials mentioning Los Angeles in January 2025 as of this writing.
On January 13, 2025, a spokesperson for United24 told Lead Stories via email:
The video is fake.
Ukraine's government Center for Countering Disinformation addressed the claim in a statement on Telegram (archived here) published on January 12, 2025. It referred to the clip as a "fake video" promoted by "hostile propaganda."
The Russian text below the clip shared in the post on Telegram contained a hashtag #satire, and the channel's description in Russian (archived here) referred to its contents as "news and politics with a dash of humor and analysis," as translated by Lead Stories.
No record of the supposed government statement
A search across Ukrainian government websites for Ukrainian keywords relevant to the claim seen here (archived here) and here (archived here) did not produce any corroborating statements issued in the first 13 days of January 2025.
A search of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office website for the keywords seen here (archived here) showed no matches.
Lead Stories manually reviewed the office's press releases issued in January 2025. Still, none mentioned Los Angeles wildfires or damaged California properties allegedly owned by "Ukrainian military officials," as seen here (archived here), here (archived here), here (archived here), here (archived here) and here (archived here).
Lead Stories also searched the English-language Prosecutor General's account on X, which did not show (archived here) posts mentioning Los Angeles, either.
A search across English-language news websites indexed by Google News for the keywords seen here produced a single report (archived here) covering the supposed news. However, it cited an obscure source: another anonymous Russian Telegram channel. Furthermore, the website that published the report spread pro-Kremlin claims about the war in Ukraine in the past.
In a January 11, 2025, post (archived here), the quoted Telegram channel, in turn, cited some unnamed Ukrainian sources, but did not offer any specific names, locations or dates and did not link any publicly released statements or news reports published or aired by credible media organizations.
Gen. Valery Zalushniy (archived here) whose "team" was mentioned in the video was the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the first stages of the war following the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In March 2024, he became the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK and still served in this capacity as of January 13, 2025.
Lead Stories contacted the Ukraine's Embassy in the UK and the Office of the Prosecutor General for additional comments. If we receive a response, this story will be updated as appropriate.
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The claim that is the focus of this article was not an isolated example of the pro-Kremlin narrative suggesting that Western military aid (archived here) is primarily misused to enrich top government officials in Ukraine.
In the past, Lead Stories reported that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn't buy a €88 Million hotel in a French ski resort, or an Italian villa from Sting for 75 million euros, or a $20 million mansion in Vero Beach, Florida, or "Hitler's Mercedes."
Furthermore, Lead Stories found no evidence to support claims that Zelenskyy acquired a $200 million casino resort in Cyprus or Britain's Highgrove house from King Charles III or that his wife bought a 4.5 million euro Bugatti in June 2024.
Similar claims targeted the head of the Ukrainian president's office Andriy Yermak (archived here) and Ukraine's former minister of defense Oleksii Reznikov.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war can be found here. Articles about the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires are here.
