The French-language website that first published this «news» was created by propagandists just a few days before the fake was spread.
Pro-Russian sources are spreading the news that Volodymyr Zelensky’s company Film Heritage Inc. allegedly bought the Palace des Neiges hotel in Courchevel for 88 million euros. Now the hotel in the exclusive ski resort is supposedly being prepared for renovation and opening for the 2026-2027 winter season. As «proof», propagandists point out that information about the new owner has already been allegedly published on the hotel’s website.
However, this news is a carefully planned disinformation campaign by Russian propaganda. First, Les Echos de la France is not a real French media, but a «disposable» website created by attackers specifically to spread this narrative. Using the whois.com tool, which allows us to obtain information about domains and IP addresses, we found that this domain was registered at the end of November 2024 on the Lithuanian server Hostinger. This server has previously appeared in studies by international fact-checkers: it is not the first time that Russian propaganda hosted fake sites on it in order to spread disinformation. Moreover, the video also lists the wrong hotel website: hotelpalacedesneiges.com instead of the real palacedesneiges.com. The fake website, which was also created just a few days ago (November 22), indeed states that the hotel is owned by Film Heritage Inc. Yet there is no such note on the real resource. Neither credible Western media nor Monte-Carlo SBM — the business group that actually owns this property — reported on the «purchase» of the expensive hotel by a company associated with Volodymyr Zelensky.
This is not the first time that Russian propagandists have spread false information about the expensive purchases of Volodymyr Zelensky and his close circle through fake foreign websites. They actively spread these fakes not only to Russians, but also to foreign audiences.
We previously refuted such narratives in the stories Fake: Volodymyr Zelensky Bought Sting’s Italian Villa for 75 Million Euros and Fake: Olena Zelenska Bought a Bugatti Tourbillon Car for 4.5 Million Euros. Read more about the mechanisms of spreading such narratives in the study conducted by StopFake in collaboration with our Spanish partners Maltida.es, as well as fact-checkers from Lithuania, Georgia, and Latin American countries Zelensky and his wife spending Western money on luxury goods or squandering war resources: the cross-border disinformation campaigns circulating from Georgia to Argentina.
