In the fictional world of Russia's decadeslong disinformation campaign, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a corrupt owner of multimillion-dollar villas, cars, yachts and other luxury goods purchased using the West's financial aid, particularly the U.S. taxpayers' money.
He is also a Nazi drug addict alcoholic who kills investigative journalists, represses ethnic minorities and is a mass murderer who attacked Russia and refuses to stop the war while cynically profiting from Ukrainian deaths. The Kremlin's propaganda portrayal of Zelenskyy is the epitome of a disinformation tactic dubbed "projection" — that is when one side projects on the opposing side its own crimes and characteristics. In this case, Russia's President Vladimir Putin stands verifiably accused of committing all sorts of crimes that his propaganda machine projects onto Zelenskyy.
Investigative journalists and fact-checkers, including VOA's, have been looking into the Kremlin's claims about the Ukrainian president and proving them false. Yet the Russian-cooked list of Zelenskyy's evil traits keeps growing. Most recently, the Kremlin's news sites, newspapers and social media accounts accused Zelenskyy of monopolizing the funeral industry in Ukraine by trademarking his last name.
Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti cited the Ukrainian president's October 2022 registration of the "ZELENSKYY" trademark with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), suggesting that he was entering the funeral.
