Two years into the Russia-Ukraine war, some social media posts are claiming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is leaving his home country to become a United States citizen.
A Feb. 9 Instagram post shared an excerpt from a Dec. 8 episode of the “Redacted” podcast in which host Clayton Morris said the reports of Zelenskyy’s plans were revealed by an anonymous U.S. Secret Service agent.
Morris said the agent claims to have documents that show “the U.S. has already negotiated a plan to remove Zelenskyy from power, bring him to the United States as a U.S. citizen, and here you can see these naturalization documents.”
The video then shows a document titled “certificate of naturalization” with Zelenskyy’s photo and personal information.
Another Instagram post shared the same video. This post’s caption read, “Biden is giving Zelenskyy U.S. citizenship after Biden destabilized Ukraine. This is a complete mess.”
(Screengrab from Instagram)
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The naturalization certificate is inauthentic; it includes multiple discrepancies based on what the official document is supposed to include.
The supposed certificate shows the Ukrainian president’s first and last names, but not his full legal name, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, which is required. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services specifies that “a full legal name includes the person’s first name, middle name(s) (if any), and family name (or surname) without any initials or nicknames.”
Authentic certificates include the USCIS director’s signature. The director is Ur M. Jaddou, who has served in that role since 2021. But the document shown in the video is signed by “Haley Burns,” who is not listed among USCIS agency leadership.
A reverse-image search using TinEye of the photo on the supposed document revealed that Zelenskyy’s headshot on the certificate was taken from a 2022 post on the Ukraine president’s official website.
A separate reverse-image search of the entire certificate using Google Images showed the photo was published in a November 2023 DC Weekly article. This site is known for spreading misinformation related to the Russia-Ukraine war.
The article says it was written by Jessica Devlin, whose author biography included with the article says she is a journalist with decades of experience who previously worked for Bloomberg News in Moscow. We found no record of Devlin’s work as a journalist outside of DC Weekly.
The author bio also includes a photo, supposedly of Devlin. However, a reverse-image search using Google Images revealed the woman in the photo is Judy Batalion, and the photo was taken from Batalion’s 2013 first-person essay on Jewish motherhood.
The supposed naturalization certificate says that Zelenskyy resides in Vero Beach, Florida, and one of the commenters on the Instagram post said, “Why Florida? Oh yeah he has a mansion there. How can he afford that? Oh yeah we sent (billions) to Ukraine.” We previously fact-checked a related claim that Zelenskyy owns a $35 million home in Florida and rated it False.
We found no credible news reports or government announcements from the U.S. or Ukraine about Zelenskyy leaving Ukraine to become a U.S. citizen.
We rate the claim that a photo shows Zelenskyy’s U.S. naturalization certificate False.