Last summer, a Tik-Toc account posted this video that had an explosive claim.

The video claimed that the daughter of a former Ukrainian defense minister had purchased this luxury

villa in Spain, which the video claimed was worth

7 million euros. The implication was that the money that the US and foreign

governments were sending to Ukraine for weapons was actually

just being embezzled by Ukrainian leaders to buy luxury homes abroad.

But the whole thing was made up.

A joint investigation by the BBC and the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab

found that this video was part of a massive Russian influence campaign, one that used social media to push

the very specific lie that Ukrainian officials were taking foreign cash and buying homes abroad.

That lie has now been thoroughly debunked.

And yet here was that very specific piece of Russian disinformation coming out of the mouth

of a sitting US senator yesterday.

We're thinking about giving Ukraine more money to waste.

These people can't buy any more houses and what they bought.

They've got beach houses all over the

world. Let's start thinking about our country. That was US Senator and a member of

the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tommy Tberville, parroting Russian

disinformation. Senator Tuberville is far from the only Republican

official saying this, though. Last November, a Russian disinformation website disguised as a local news outfit called D.C. weekly

pushed the, again, explosive but entirely false claim that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolensky had bought two luxury yachts.

Totally false, incredibly specific, and again, thoroughly debunked.

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