Associated Incidents
A new Seattle Tribune article has it all: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Adolf Hitler, and a $15 million classic car. Unsurprisingly, it quickly spread across Russian state media.
However, the topic of the news seems odd for this “American city news site.” Such outlets usually cover only local events.
In fact, the article with the headline “Hitler’s parade car was bought by Ukrainian President Zelensky” is another fake spread by Russian propaganda.
There is no media outlet called the Seattle Tribune (there is only a website masquerading as a full-fledged publication), and the article is a compilation of the most popular Russian disinformation narratives about Ukraine: “Nazism,” “corruption,” and “waste of American aid.”
According to this article, Zelensky was allegedly “spotted” getting out of a Mercedes-Benz 770K Grosser Offener Tourenwagen, Adolf Hitler’s parade car, in Kyiv. It was allegedly spotted a few days after the president returned from the United States, where the American authorities allocated a multi-billion dollar aid package to Ukraine.
The article includes a screenshot of a post by the Ukrainian Telegram channel Realna Viyna with a photo of this car, allegedly parked in front of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine.
Image of a fake post allegedly published by the Telegram channel Realna Viyna.
However, in addition to the fact that the Seattle Tribune does not exist as a full-fledged media outlet, there are several other obvious problems with the article.
First, Realna Viyna did not publish the post shown in the screenshot. Second, the photo of the car is also a montage made up of different images: for example, the image of the Tourenwagen was stolen from another photo circulated on the Internet.
Voice of America found that the angle of this widely circulated photograph, the black spot on the asphalt under the car door, and the reflection on the front windshield are all consistent with the photograph of "Hitler's car in Kyiv."
A popular photograph from which the image of "Hitler's car" was cut out for the fake about Zelensky
Thirdly, the Seattle Tribune website was registered on October 3 of this year, six days before the publication of the fake article, and only for a year.
The Seattle Tribune may belong to a network of sites run by John Mark Dougan, an American living in Russia. This was reported [by Shayan Sardarizadeh, a BBC Verify journalist who verifies information and debunks fakes, on the X network (former Twitter). According to Sardarizadeh, using fake local news sites is a standard approach for Dougan.
Dugan fled criminal prosecution from the United States to Russia, where he received political asylum. According to a newsguard.com investigation published in May 2024, Dugan controls a network of at least 167 disinformation sites.
His sites previously spread a fake story about how Ukraine's first lady Olena Zelenska allegedly bought a Bugatti supercar during a visit to France, where the memory of the Allied forces who participated in the Normandy landings in 1944 was honored. That article appeared to be aimed at a Western audience; in contrast, the new fake story is mostly being distributed in the Russian information environment.
Dugan told VOA he was unaware of the Seattle Tribune website: “Never heard of it,” he wrote. “But I looked it up and found it to be a great resource. A true pillar of journalistic integrity, on par with the NYT, CNN, and MSNBC.”
As is often the case with better fakes, the “Hitler’s car” article combines a fictitious story about Zelensky buying the car with real facts about the sale of a similar car in the United States.
The information was taken from an article in the real Seattle Times (not the Tribune!). In February 2018, the major Seattle publication reported that the car was up for auction in Scottsdale, Arizona. It failed to sell at the time, but after some time the car did find a buyer.
The "Hitler car" was later briefly unloaded from a truck in the wealthy Seattle suburb of Medina, where the car attracted the attention of a local resident, who told the publication about it. The car was later likely taken away.
In a comment to the Seattle Times, Rod Egan, director of the auction company Worldwide Auctioneers (his name is also mentioned in the fake text on the Seattle Tribune website), refused to name the buyer of the car, citing a non-disclosure agreement.
However, Egan said that the destination for the car was "very, very far away" outside the United States.
The article also cited a comment from a German antique car dealer who said that in 2009, six similar cars were bought by a Russian billionaire. Among them was the car mentioned in the fake article.