Within 24 hours, Russian disinformation about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife buying a Bugatti with American aid money spread like wildfire across the internet. Although it came from an unknown French website, it quickly became a trending topic on X and the first result on Google.
On Monday, July 1, a website called Vérité Cachée published an article. The headline of the article read, “Olena Zelenska Becomes First Owner of an All-New Bugatti Tourbillon.” The article stated that during a trip to Paris with her husband in June, the First Lady had the opportunity to view Bugatti’s novel $4.8 million supercar privately and immediately placed an order. It also included a video of a man who claimed to work at a car dealership.
However, the video, like the entire website, was completely false.
Hidden Truth is part of the network websites possibly linked to the Russian government that promote Russian propaganda and disinformation for audiences in Europe and the U.S. that is being super-powered by AI, according to researchers at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future who are tracking the group’s activities. The group found that similar websites across the web with names like Great British Geopolitics or The Boston Times operate generative AI to create, scrape and manipulate content, publishing thousands of articles attributed to phony journalists.
Dozens of Russian mediamany of them owned or controlled by the Kremlin, reported on the Bugatti story and cited Vérité Cachée as a source. Most of the articles appeared on July 2, and the story was spread across a number of pro-Kremlin Telegram channels with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. The link was also promoted by a network of phony Doppelganger bot accounts on X, according to researchers at @Antibot4Navalny.
At this point, Bugatti issued a statement debunking the story. However, the disinformation quickly spread to X, where it was posted on a number of pro-Kremlin accounts before being Jackson Hinkle picked upAND pro-Russianpro-Trump troll with 2.6 million followers. Hinkle shared the story and added that it was “American taxpayer money” that paid for the car.
English-language websites then began reporting the story, citing social media posts by people like Hinkle, as well as a Vérité Cachée article. As a result, anyone who Googled “Zelensky Bugatti” last week would have gotten a link to MSN, a Microsoft news aggregator site that republished a story written by Al Bawaba, a Middle Eastern news aggregator that cited “many social media users” and “rumors.”
It took just a few hours for the phony story to go from an unknown site to a popular topic online and a top Google result, showing how effortless it is for bad actors to undermine people’s trust in what they see and read online. Google and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.