Antifake / Factcheck

22 ліпеня 2022

Fake news of the week: Zelenskiy takes Ukrainian gold out to Poland and prepares to flee

That the news is made up from beginning to end

Authors:
Editors:
Nadana Fridrichson, presenter of the Open Air programme on Zvezda TV channel, said that Ukraine is exporting its foreign exchange and gold reserves to Poland:

"The Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, Sergiy Nikolaychuk, in his interview to the "Rabbit Hole” magazine told hat Ukraine's gold and foreign currency reserves are not being exported just somewhere, but to Poland, where they will be stored until the situation stabilises. Why have they decided to export the gold now? “It is a quiet Ukrainian night but the gold has to be moved”. And isn’t some part of the Kyiv elite about to make an escape? And if they flee, who will be left?"

And then an employee of Zvezda TV channel hold a whole investigation about gold being exported as collateral for loans, and Poland absorbing Ukraine. 

And by the way, here is the Komsomolskaya Pravda article that Nadana was showing. The newspaper's employee Alexander Grishin there indeed claims that the Deputy Head of the National Bank of Ukraine told "Rabbit Hole" about this.

And here is that "Rabbit Hole" interview with Sergiy Nikolaychuk. It exists. We have read it through. He talked about a 40% drop in GDP, manual management of the economy in wartime and how Russia's exclusion from the IMF would help Ukraine. But he said nothing about gold and foreign currency reserves. And he didn’t mention Poland even once. So it turns out that the news is made up from beginning to end.