Russian propaganda spread the fake that Zelenskyy had bought two yachts with Western aid - Congress reacted to this

The website of former Marine John Mark Dugan, who now lives in Russia, has started a rumor that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has purchased two luxury yachts with American aid money provided to Ukraine.

Source. This was reported by the BBC.

The website's statement was more than controversial: Zelensky allegedly paid $75 million for two yachts through two of his advisers and front men. The Ukrainian authorities categorically deny this, and it turned out that these yachts were not actually sold to anyone.

Although the allegation was disinformation, the fake news worked. It began to spread on the Internet, and even American congressmen who make important decisions on military aid to Kyiv reacted to it.

Leaders of both chambers say that the issue of further aid to Ukraine will be postponed until the new year. And some are categorically opposed to aid to Ukraine.

"Anyone who votes for aid to Ukraine is subsidizing the most corrupt foreign war scheme in our nation's history," tweeted Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, referring to the same fake news story about the yacht.

Republican Senator J.D. Vance, while discussing budget priorities, said: "There are people who are willing to cut social benefits, condemn our grandparents to poverty, and for what? So that Zelenskiy's ministers can buy bigger yachts?" – he proclaimed.

Although the rumors about the yachts turned out to be false, the BBC found out that a Russian-linked website was behind the story. According to the investigators, the website is likely to be "a specially created tool linked to the Russian government and designed to give certain stories a sense of credibility."

The story first broke in late November on an unremarkable YouTube channel with a handful of subscribers and only one video posted.

But the story was picked up by a website called DC Weekly, which also published photos of the two yachts, Lucky Me and My Legacy, and documentation purportedly confirming their sale to Zelenskiy's partners.

However, the brokers of the company that put the yachts up for sale claim that this is a fake, that the documents on the purchase of the vessels by Zelenskyy or his advisors are actually fake, and that the yachts have not been sold to anyone yet.

The author of the fake news, John Mark Dugan, served as a deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County for three years, and after resigning in 2009, he founded a website where he began spreading rumors about his former employers. He claimed that he was fighting corruption in police circles, but after an FBI raid on his office, he was forced to flee to Russia, where he was granted political asylum.

There, he engaged in "journalistic" and "investigative" activities and began to disseminate false or unfounded information. In particular, he claimed that one of the goals of Russia's invasion of Ukraine was to destroy biolabs where weapons intended to exterminate the Russian population were allegedly being developed.

The Clemson University researchers also found out that DC Weekly publishes stories borrowed from other websites and rewritten using AI technologies, and that the publication's "reporters" have fake names and photos.