Did E! News publish a report saying that Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy bought a residence from Norwegian royalty? No, that's not true: Such a story did not appear on that website. The viral rumor originated from a different website that was registered only two days before publishing the story.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @MonitorX99800 on Sept. 29, 2026. The caption read:
🇳🇴🇧🇿⚡️- Norway's royal family has sold its 240-acre family estate for roughly $43 million.
The buyer is listed as Belize-based Film Heritage Inc., reportedly linked to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Oslo rejected the approach in 2025, but the sale was later completed after the estate reportedly became a burden for the palace.
The video attached to the post said:
The deal was finalized during Zelenskyy's visit to Norway for the funeral of King Harald on September 9. ...
Sources close to the royal family say that Zelenskyy first expressed interest in purchasing the estate in 2025, during his second visit to Norway. The royal family declined at the time. The Ukrainian president renewed his offer in 2026 after the scandal broke, and the deal was agreed upon by the end of August. Experts suggest additional factors may have motivated the sale: the financial difficulties of the Norwegian royal court and Haakon's accession to the throne, which would require the royal family to relocate to the Royal Palace in Oslo.
This is what a screenshot from that video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @MonitorX99800 on X.)
Norway's King Harald V (archived here) died in late August 2026, and his son ascended the throne as King Haakon VIII. On Sept. 9, 2026, Zelenskyy and his wife attended (archived here) the funeral, joining many other world leaders.
Lead Stories found no news reports about the supposed high-stakes purchase published by E! News or any other established media organization.
E! News (archived here and here) is a website that publishes content about entertainment and fashion. A search across it for the last name of the Ukrainian president returned only four results: three from 2022 and one from 2023, and two of those four articles covered other topics. None of the pieces mentioned the purchase of the royal mansion in Norway:
(Image source: E! News.)
Lead Stories reviewed available September 2026 saved copies of the site's front page on the Internet Archive, but the "news" about the mansion didn't appear there.
Lead Stories reviewed E! News accounts on Facebook and X, but the report in question was not there.
(Image source: Facebook.)
(Image source: X.)
A reverse image search of the cover picture from the viral video on Google didn't produce any results that would have confirmed that it originated from the real E! News website or related pages.
Lead Stories also searched for the video's thumbnail on Google, and that search revealed that the same frame had been online at least since 2023:
(Image source: Google.)
A search across English-language news reports showed two articles published between Sept. 1 and Oct. 5, 2026, that mentioned the name of the property. Neither of them reported the claim:
(Image source: Google News.)
The Hello Magazine report (archived here) said the opposite of what the viral post reviewed in this fact check claimed. According to that article, the royal couple would not permanently move to Oslo and remain in Skaugum.
The second result seen in the screenshot appeared to show the E! News website but the line above the headline that typically lists the source didn't say it was the E! News website. "Howl Link" it read. That is a type of link (archived here) that, in part, expedites revenue generation for e-commerce websites.
Lead Stories found it was a website mimicking E! News (archived here) by using a similar-sounding web address. According to the WhoIs data (archived here), the website that published the claim reviewed in this fact check on Sept. 29, 2026, as a textual story had been registered just two days earlier:
(Image source: GoDaddy.)
Skaugum has been a royal residence for nearly a century, according to the official website of the Norwegian Royal House (archived here). It said nothing about the sale.
The page of the royal family on Instagram said nothing about it, either.
Lead Stories also looked up (archived here) the name of the property on Google News Norway, which didn't show any reporting from established media organizations about the sale of the estate.
In mid-summer 2026, TV 2 (archived here), a Norwegian "commercial public broadcaster," reported (archived here) that then-Crown Prince Haakon and then-Crown Princess Mette-Marit were renting out properties included in the estate. However, that article didn't discuss any plans to sell the estate.
The Ukrainian government's Center for Countering Disinformation wrote (archived here) on Oct. 1, 2026:
This information is false, and the video report is entirely fabricated.
Lead Stories reached out to E! News and the Norwegian royal communication team for additional comments. If Lead Stories receives a response, this story will be updated, as appropriate.
Claims about Zelenskyy or his wife buying expensive properties or extravagant luxury goods have been circulating on the internet since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Lead Stories debunked some of them here.
