Welcome to Disinfo Bulletin, your daily update from the EDMO network. Today's most relevant stories: 

👑 The false story that Zelensky bought a residence owned by King Charles III. According to an unfounded claim spreading quickly across several countries, the Ukrainian president Zelensky bought a building previously belonging to the British royal family: Highgrove House, the private residence of King Charles III and his wife. This unfounded information, spread by Russian propaganda channels, is often accompanied by false claims suggesting that the purchase was made with money that Ukraine received from Western countries to resist the Russian invasion of its territories.

Recently, another false story that Zelensky had bought a villa previously belonging to the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels was widely disseminated in the EU. So far, the false story about the Highgrove House has been detected in: ES, IT, DE, NL, CZ.


🗳️🇪🇸 The false narrative that the Spanish government is “giving citizenship” to half a million illegal migrants. Following a petition by ordinary citizens, the Spanish Congress recently admitted to be discussed in Parliament a proposal to regularize around 500,000 illegal migrants living in the country since 2021. Numerous claims have appeared on social media that the government is allegedly “giving away Spanish citizenship to masses of illegal immigrants” to allow them to vote at the elections. In fact, this is a popular legislative initiative that Congress has only admitted for parliamentary scrutiny, so it must go through the normal parliamentary process before it can be enacted. However, the proposed legislature involves only a regularization of their immigrant status, and not citizenship as falsely claimed.

This kind of false stories have already been detected in other national contexts and may appear in other countries as the EU elections approach. For more on this and other disinformation campaigns likely to be pushed ahead of the EU elections… ⬇️


🎯 Check out the first edition of the EDMO Weekly Insights and Early Warnings ahead of the June elections. This weekly publication aims to report on the major disinformation incidents and to warn about the disinformation narratives to expect in the run-up to the elections, based on an analysis of events that can trigger disinformation. Read the first edition here: EDMO Weekly Insights and Early Warnings, Edition n°1. 

If you have suggestions, comments or requests about this newsletter, you can write to edmo.tfeu2024@eui.eu

This tool gathers material from the inputs of the EDMO fact-checking network, as well as a recently launched public database from the EFCSN network (Elections 24 Check), and the various national EDMO hubs, including community initiatives and insights from individual fact-checking organizations.