It’s incredible how a single, fabricated story can take on a life of its own, isn’t it? We saw this play out recently with a viral claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Imagine this: a video pops up online, dressed up like a real news report, declaring that Zelenskyy had splurged on a whopping $3.2 million Armani-designed apartment in Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa for his mother. The world’s tallest building, no less! This story, despite being completely false, exploded across social media, raking in millions of views. The sheer audacity of it, at a time when Ukraine is grappling with immense hardship, made it particularly insidious. While the story was eventually debunked, the real puzzle was figuring out who was pulling the strings behind such a deceptive campaign. Now, thanks to a treasure trove of leaked documents, the spotlight has fallen on an organization called the Social Design Agency – a group with deep, troubling ties to the Kremlin, Russia’s seat of power, and one that has already been sanctioned by Western countries for its nefarious activities.
These leaked documents, a massive collection of communications, didn’t just point fingers; they painted a detailed picture. They came from a corporate platform used by both Kremlin insiders and the Social Design Agency, an entity that the United States specifically identified in 2024 as a “key actor” in a “persistent foreign malign influence campaign” orchestrated directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration. Think of it as peeking into their private chats and internal memos. The news outlet Delfi Estonia got their hands on these documents and shared them with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian service, Schemes, and other media organizations. What these documents revealed was truly eye-opening. They showcased the Social Design Agency’s widespread involvement in various divisive acts and influence campaigns stretching across Europe and beyond. From acts of vandalism in Germany and France to attempts to mess with elections in Armenia, and even spreading pro-Russian narratives through influential people in Western countries – their reach was extensive and deeply concerning. Among this trove of information was an internal report specifically detailing their efforts to smear Zelenskyy with the false claim of him buying luxury real estate while his country was being devastated by Russia’s full-scale invasion, which Putin launched in 2022, bringing relentless attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.
The timing of this smear campaign was carefully orchestrated. Metadata from the internal report shows it was created on June 9, 2025, just a few days after the Burj Khalifa fabrication first surfaced on social media. The heart of the campaign was that video, deliberately made to look like a story from the reputable Saudi-based network Al Arabiya. According to the internal report itself, they estimated that this disinformation about Zelenskyy could have reached an astonishing 86 million views worldwide, with 21 million specifically among English-speaking audiences. While those numbers can’t be independently verified, they hint at the scale of their ambition. The report even begrudgingly noted that Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a part of their National Security and Defense Council, eventually debunked the claim, highlighting how they observed the official pushback. This internal report, tellingly titled “REFERENCE.MEDIA CASE.BURJ KHALIFA,” also meticulously tracked the spread of the false claim. It proudly stated that 19 “project contractors” helped circulate it internationally, resulting in over 10 million views. While the contractors weren’t named, the report did mention “large foreign bloggers with an audience of millions” who were instrumental in distributing the fake video about Zelenskyy “after the publication of the case materials began.” The deceptive report initially began its journey through Russian Telegram channels on June 5, 2025, with research group Vox Ukraine pinpointing its initial internet upload to June 4.
One of the prominent figures who amplified this false narrative was Jim Ferguson, a British politician who previously ran for a Parliament seat with the Brexit Party in 2019, albeit unsuccessfully. His post on June 5, 2025, which remains online and has garnered approximately 2 million views, read, “While Ukrainians suffer under war and rationing, Zelensky quietly gifted his mother a $3.2M apartment in the Burj Khalifa — 11th floor, Armani Residences.” Ferguson, when approached by Schemes for comment, remained silent. Similarly, a post about the bogus report can still be found on the X account “Concerned Citizen,” where it has accumulated about 1.5 million views. This isn’t the first time the Social Design Agency has been unmasked for its shadowy operations. In September 2024, Schemes reported on another leak that unveiled details of the agency’s efforts to undermine Ukraine and Western governments. That same month, in a court document, the U.S. government explicitly accused the Social Design Agency and other Russian companies of employing “domains impersonating legitimate news entities” and other tactics “to covertly spread Russian government propaganda.”
The U.S. government’s accusation didn’t stop there. It asserted that these efforts had been ongoing since at least 2022, carried out “under the direction and control” of Putin’s administration, and “in particular” under Sergei Kiriyenko, a high-ranking Kremlin official who has served as a first deputy chief of staff for a decade. The seriousness of these allegations led to concrete actions. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the Social Design Agency in March 2024, with the European Union and the United Kingdom swiftly following suit. This shows a unified international response to what is clearly recognized as a dangerous and destabilizing force. But the Burj Khalifa claim was just one piece of a much larger puzzle uncovered by the leaked records. They also implicated the Social Design Agency in a disturbing array of actions that appeared to be hate crimes. Imagine this chilling detail: one incident involved leaving pigs’ heads in front of nine mosques in Paris. This wasn’t merely about political influence; it ventured into acts designed to incite hatred and division.
Beyond these disturbing acts, another leaked document revealed an apparent plan by the agency to manipulate the Armenian parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7. This particular effort takes on added significance given that it occurred amidst the incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government’s push to distance the South Caucasus country further from Moscow’s influence and strengthen its ties with the West. The implications here are profound: a foreign entity actively attempting to subvert democratic processes in a sovereign nation, all to serve Moscow’s geopolitical interests. This entire saga, from the fabricated luxury apartment story to the broader scope of the Social Design Agency’s activities, paints a stark picture of modern information warfare. It highlights how easily a well-crafted lie can spread, the significant resources dedicated to these campaigns, and the urgent need for critical thinking and robust fact-checking in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. It’s a sobering reminder that behind the screens and headlines, there are real people and powerful organizations actively working to shape global narratives, often with deceptive and dangerous intentions.