A Leaked Kremlin Report Reveals How They Fabricated Zelensky Dubai Apartment Story
A leaked internal briefing from the Kremlin-linked Social Design Agency takes credit for fabricating and seeding the viral 2025 claim that Zelensky bought his mother a luxury apartment in Dubai.
In June 2025, a fabricated story spread online claiming that Volodymyr Zelensky had bought his mother a $3.2 million apartment in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. It was built around an AI-manipulated video made to look like a report by the Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya, and it was quickly debunked: no such Al Arabiya report ever aired, and Dubai’s land registry shows no such purchase.
This document is the after-action “media case” that the Social Design Agency (SDA — Агентство социального проектирования), a Western-sanctioned Kremlin contractor, produced to claim credit for the campaign. It surfaced in the leak obtained by Delfi Estonia and reported by the Dossier Center together with OCCRP and others.
Read it as the perpetrators’ own scorecard — the apartment story is false, and every figure it cites, including its claim of more than 86 million views, is the agency’s own internal estimate. It is reproduced here exactly as written and translated slide by slide, with no edits or commentary.
Slide 1
BRIEFING NOTE
Media Case
“BURJ KHALIFA”
Date executed: 9 June 2025
Slide 2
I. Description of the media case
According to the case materials, Zelensky bought his mother a luxury apartment in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper for $3.2 million. As reported by the Arabic outlet Al Arabiya, citing data from the Dubai Land Department, the deal was concluded on 16 September 2024 — the birthday of Rymma Zelenska, who is officially listed as a pensioner and lives in Kryvyi Rih. The purchased apartment measures 186 square meters. It is located on the 11th floor of the skyscraper and forms part of the Armani Residences complex, whose interior was designed by Giorgio Armani.
Slide 3
After the case materials began to be published, the story of Zelensky’s luxury purchase was published by major foreign bloggers with multimillion-strong audiences [their posts, screenshots]
Slide 4
The story of Zelensky’s multimillion-dollar purchase reached Russia’s largest media outlets. Vitaly Borodin, head of the Federal Security and Anti-Corruption Project, issued an appeal to the UN, in which he demanded that an investigation be carried out into the corrupt activities of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
Silovoy Blok — News Agency
Menu: Home · Politics · Army · Society · Service · Weapons · Abroad · EconomyPOLITICS Borodin calls on the UN to investigate Zelensky for corruption after his property purchase in the UAE
Author: Elena Evstratova
Slide 5
As the case materials spread, Ukraine’s «Center for Countering Disinformation» refuted the claim that Zelensky had bought his mother an apartment in the tallest building in the world. The body, which operates under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, noted that Al Arabiya’s website contains no information about the Ukrainian leader purchasing luxury real estate, and that the narrative of Zelensky’s corruption is one of the most popular among «Russian propagandists».
Center for Countering Disinformation (@CforCD) ❗ Fake information is being spread on X claiming that President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky allegedly purchased an apartment in the Burj Khalifa “for his mother” for $3.2 million. [accompanying image overlaid with the text “as a birthday gift for his mother Rimma Zelenska” and stamped “FAKE”]
Slide 6
Some comments from social-media users outraged by Zelensky’s multimillion-dollar spending:
Slide 7
II. Publication of the media-case materials
A) Publications in the foreign segment of the internet
19 of the Project’s contractors shared the media-case materials on social media. Views of the case materials via contractors — 10,178,900.
Organic distribution of the content across foreign media and social networks gathered 35,971,000 views.
In the foreign segment of the internet, the case materials gathered a combined total of 46,149,900 views as of 09.06.2025.
B) Publications in the Russian segment of the internet
As of 09.06.2025, Russian mass media and social-media blogs had published 415 items about the case, with a combined reach of 39,664,400 views.
C) Refutation of the case materials
As of 09.06.2025, 22 refutations had been published on social media and on foreign news resources, with a combined reach of 410,800 views.
D) Total reach of the materials about the case
In the Russian and foreign segments of the internet, the materials about the case and the refutations gathered a combined total of
86,225,100 views
(in English — 21,405,200 views; in French — 5,950,400 views; in German — 148,300 views; in Ukrainian, Spanish, Italian, and other languages — 19,056,800 views; in Russian — 39,664,400 views) as of 9 June 2025.
of course because that’s all russia knows how to do—lie.