How pro-Russian 'yacht' propaganda influenced US debate over Ukraine aid
How pro-Russian 'yacht' propaganda influenced US debate over Ukraine aid
A false rumour spread by a dubious AI-powered website caught the attention of leading politicians.
A website founded by a former US Marine who now lives in Russia has fuelled a rumour that Volodymyr Zelensky purchased two luxury yachts with American aid money.
Despite the false claim, the disinformation plot was successful. It took off online and was echoed by members of the US Congress making crucial decisions about military spending.
It was an incredible assertion - using two advisers as proxies, Mr Zelensky paid $75m (£59m) for two yachts.
But not only has the Ukrainian government flatly denied the story, the two ships in question have not even been sold.
Despite being false, the story reached members of the US Congress, where leaders say any decision on further aid to Ukraine will be delayed until next year.
Redirecting military funds to buy wealthy oligarchs’ yachts is what has caused most of the problems with the Russian military. That and their military culture in general.
Pro-Putin useful idiots in the west parrot this language to make false allegations against Ukraine because it seems familiar and “truth-y” to the region because Russia literally did what they’re falsely accusing their opponents of doing. Still bullshit.
Zelenskyy fights from the front and asks for allies to keep their promises. Putin lives in a bunker and orders the bombing of schools and hospitals. Please don’t equate “the ukraine” with Russia. Muscovites lived in mud huts while Kyiv was the political and cultural center of the region.
How can anyone with a brain respect this group of GOP elected officials?
They believe what they want to believe so they can rationalize the shitty things they do and say.
Either they're traitors paid off by Russian, or they really are dumb enough to spout off unverified information like they're on Facebook rather than supppsedly helping run a country
Also, why would anything we've seen from Zelensky so far suggest he would be the type to waste his country's precious resources on yachts? That's the behaviour of someone who'd sit out a war they instigated in a bunker.
So either the people in the US government who believe and repeat this are bought and paid for bad-faith actors who are working to promote foreign, hostile interests, and therefore guilty of treason
Or
They are so unbelievably idiotic that they fall for easily disproved lies coming from hostile territory.
Either way, they have no place in government and should be removed.
It could be both...
Well, you certainly aren't wrong. I'm not sure which of the three options is worse though.
...Why would someone buy even a single Yacht while they're in the middle of a war, while likely also being a #1 target of said war?
Like if it was true I'd think he's an idiot, cause that's a hefty purchase that he likely wouldn't even be able to use right now. Why would anyone believe that at face value??
Because American policy makers and most of the public don't know what being at war is.
They send people to war across the world. They haven't experienced war in 150 years.
So for them, especially a high level politician can easily chill on his yacht one day while voting to send a bunch of soldiers to their death the next day.
They have no concept of what it means to be like Zelensky, being the primary target for assassination, being in the thick of it in a nation undergoing a full scale war.
And since a good chunk of politics, especially the far right, is stuffed to the brim with people incapable of empathy, they can only imagine what they'd do and not what someone like Zelensky would do.
Because that's the kind of thing people like these senators would do, so it makes sense to them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A website founded by a former US Marine who now lives in Russia has fuelled a rumour that Volodymyr Zelensky purchased two luxury yachts with American aid money.
While discussing budget priorities on a podcast hosted by former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Mr Vance said: "There are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty, why?
Mr Dougan spent three years as a deputy with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office, then after he left in 2009 he started a website spreading rumours about his former employers.
He said he does not recall the person he sold it to and has lost the paperwork due to being kicked off payment platforms and losing access to email accounts because of financial sanctions against Russia.
But the attention given to the country's real and ongoing corruption issues has been mild compared to online chatter over false stories backed up by fake documents and shadowy social media accounts.
BBC Verify and the Clemson researchers found a number of DC Weekly articles posted between August and December this year that followed the same pattern.
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