A two-minute video, shared March 6 on the social media platform X, appeared to offer evidence linking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. One post alone racked up 2.9 million views.
The clip, a pastiche of stock images and real news footage, featured emails purportedly sent to Epstein by the owner of a casting agency that the video claimed Zelenskiy used when he was a popular comedian. “We got a new one,” said one of them. “Very promising 13 y.o., acting background, 173 cm. Good body, long hair.”
But the email is fake. It was dated Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2010, a Sunday. And there are no emails from the person who allegedly wrote them, Yehor Skalyha, or the agency, Centrocast, in the Epstein files released by the US Justice Department. At the time, Skalyha didn’t own Centrocast. He and others bought the company in 2022 and renamed it Fire Point, which now makes missiles and drones. A spokesman for Skalyha said he had no contact with Epstein.
The video was posted by an account on X called Johnny Midnight, aka @its_The_Dr, which has 633,000 followers. It is one of more than 190 fabricated stories since August 2023 that Bloomberg News has identified as being part of a Russian influence operation known to Western intelligence agencies and researchers as Storm-1516. Together they have hundreds of millions of views on social media.
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