No Evidence LA Wildfires Destroyed 8 Mansions Owned by Ukrainian Military Generals

In mid-January 2025, a claim that the Los Angeles County wildfires destroyed eight mansions owned by Ukrainian military generals was circulating online.

For example, one X user wrote (archived): "Eight mansions of Ukrainian generals burned down in Los Angeles. According to Ukrainian publications, these objects were purchased with funds provided to Kiev by Western countries as part of 'military' aid . The total value of the destroyed properties is estimated at approximately $90 million."

????Eight mansions of Ukrainian generals burned down in Los Angeles.

According to Ukrainian publications, these objects were purchased with funds provided to Kiev by Western countries as part of "military" aid .

The total value of the destroyed properties is estimated at… pic.twitter.com/sCk1bCFnK2

— THE BEST IS?YET TO COME (@QTrump47Force) January 14, 2025

The rumor also appeared on TikTok, Facebook (archived) and in Russian and Ukrainian-language media outlets. These reports cited the @new_militarycolumnist (archived) and @naspravdiinfo (archived) Telegram channels for the claim, both of which posted the rumor on Jan. 11.

The Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a working body of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, denied (archived) the claim on Jan. 12, calling it "Russian propaganda."

United24, a Ukrainian government-run media outlet that the @naspravdiinfo channel credited as the source of the claim, confirmed via WhatsApp that it had not produced the video posted on Telegram. United24 also reportedly confirmed this to the CCD.

Snopes has reached out to the Ukrainian military for confirmation on whether their generals own mansions in Los Angeles that were burned down in the January 2025 wildfires. We will update this report if they reply.

The LA County wildfires had destroyed more than 12,300 structures by Jan. 14, according to Cal Fire (archived). Several of these were celebrity mansions in the Pacific Palisades area, according to news reports.

However, it was not possible to access a complete list of the properties destroyed in the fires or to cross-check this with the names of known Ukrainian generals.

In addressing the claim, the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation wrote on X: 

Russian propaganda is spreading a fake video, allegedly from the United24 Media, claiming that eight mansions supposedly owned by high-ranking Ukrainian military officials were damaged in the California fires.

The video claims that these houses were allegedly purchased by "members of Zaluzhnyi's team" between April 2022 and February 2024.

After verifying this information with United24 Media, the Center reports that the platform did not create or share this video.

However, due to the nature of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, where both sides have a vested interest in controlling the narrative, we cannot rely solely on one side's word for issuing a true/false rating to this claim.

No credible news outlets published reports stating that Ukrainian generals lost eight homes to the LA wildfires. In fact, some outlets published fact checks questioning the rumor.

Claim Circulated by Russian-Language Telegram Channels and New Outlets

The @naspravdiinfo Telegram channel, an early source of the claim, describes itself (archived) as "News and politics with a bit of humor and analysis." It hashtagged its Jan. 11 Telegram post "сатира," which means "satire" in Russian. However, the @new_militarycolumnist Telegram channel's Jan. 11 post was not tagged as satire. The Russian-language channel takes user submissions and posts unverified reports, including footage, from conflicts around the world.

The claim was also posted by the English-language @OlgaBazova X profile, which describes some of its content as satire and posts (archived) openly anti-Kyiv material.

Furthermore, the Ukrainian-language media outlet mentioned in the third paragraph above, that posted the claim on its site, is part of the Pravda network, a network of sites that French authorities said were "disseminating pro-Russian content and targeting several Western countries." In February 2024, VIGINUM — France's General Secretariat for Defense and National Security (SGDSN) network that monitors foreign digital interference — published a report on "Portal Kombat," the name given to a network of sites under the "Pravda" name. The report said of the collection of sites' aims:

The main objective seems to be to cover the Russo-Ukrainian conflict by presenting positively "the special military operation" and denigrating Ukraine and its leaders. Very ideologically oriented, this content repeatedly presents inaccurate or misleading narratives.

In June 2024, the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), a fact-checking hub led by the European University Institute, found that more sites from the network had been set up, this time with the news-pravda.com URL format. This is the format used by the Ukrainian-language site making the claim about the mansions of Ukrainian generals burning down. According to EDMO, the news-pravda.com sites convey "large amounts of disinformation and pro-Russia propaganda to EU public opinions."

Lastly, the Russian-language media outlet mentioned in the third paragraph above, EADaily, a Russia-based news organization, was described by U.S.-funded Radio Liberty in 2017 as having a "militant pro-Kremlin orientation." In 2020, Estonian anti-propaganda outlet PropaStop placed EADaily on their "black list" for publications "hostile to Estonia" and said its content "cannot be considered as balanced press." In 2022, the Lithuanian news outlet Delfi accused EADaily of distributing content from Russian state-owned publications Sputnik and Russia Today, outlets that have been banned in the European Union since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.