Russian media have spread the news that eight cottages belonging to so-called ‘Ukrainian generals’ have allegedly burned down as a result of large-scale fires in Los Angeles. The amount of damage, according to the fakers, is about $90 million.

The publications claim that the Ukrainian military allegedly purchased the real estate with funds that the West allocated to Kyiv as part of financial assistance after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Against the backdrop of the groans about the catastrophic shortage of money and weapons coming from Kyiv, this information is particularly striking. Perhaps the money intended for the construction of defense structures was used to build the generals' ‘dachas’, the publication writes.

But to create this video, propagandists used photo and video footage of the fire in Los Angeles, as well as a fake quote from the Commander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi: “When you steal money from people who are fighting for their lives, be prepared that the fire of war will overtake you even on another continent”.

In fact, Mykhailo Drapatyi never made such statements or commented on the fires in the USA. The video clip used his photo from an interview published in August 2022 on the official Facebook page of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There, Drapatyi talks about the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the plans and actions of the enemy.

The so-called ‘investigations’ into the property of Ukrainian officials are turning into a systematic campaign to discredit them. Thus, propagandists or Moscow's henchmen seek to portray Ukraine as a cradle of corruption schemes - which may further harm Ukraine's European integration path. After all, combating corruption and reducing it is one of the main tasks of the state on its path to the European Union.

Here are other cases involving the ‘possession’ of real estate with ‘stolen funds’: how Zelenskyi allegedly bought the villa of Hitler's propaganda minister Goebbels for 8 million euros; or how Zelenskyi's mother-in-law allegedly purchased a villa on the coast of Egypt with Western humanitarian aid to Ukraine.