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The video claiming that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has paid for visits by several prominent US officials to Ukraine has gone viral with (fake) messages in at least nine different languages (German, Spanish, French, English, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch and Romanian). Its impact has thus crossed borders, reaching more than 20 million views on Twitter (now X) in just three days.
For this study, Maldita.es has analysed more than 40 posts (all of them with more than 5,000 views at 5pm on 7 February 2025) that spread this video with disinformation messages through X. These contents have been published over three days (between 5 and 7 February) and, together, they add up to millions of views on the platform. Even so, only 14.3% (that is, six out of 42) have community notes warning users that it is disinformation content.
The narrative was also widely disseminated by channels and websites linked to or close to the Kremlin, both in Spain and in Russia and other countries between February 5 and 7.
This disinformation narrative has 20 million views in three days and nine languages
The narrative shared in X: USAID has sponsored visits by American celebrities (such as Angelina Jolie, Ben Stiller, Orlando Bloom, Sean Penn, and Jean-Claude Van Damme) to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began, in order to boost Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity in the United States and better coordinate its funding programs. Much of the content provides as supposed “proof” a video with the logo of E!News, a “celebrity and entertainment news” website in the United States.
The fact-check: The video circulating is not from E!News. There is also no evidence of USAID's alleged payments to the celebrities it mentions. Ben Stiller, the American actor and comedian who is the subject of the disinformation, has said that it is “completely false.”
Even so, Maldita.es has located up to 42 contents with more than 5,000 views as of February 7 that spread this narrative on X. These have been published between February 5 and 7, 2025 and are shared in at least seven languages in addition to Spanish: German, French, English, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch and Romanian. Some have several million views and, together (and in just three days), they add up to more than 20 million views within this platform alone.
Channels and websites linked to the Kremlin have been publishing this disinformation narrative since February 5
Since February 5, social media channels linked to the Kremlin or that routinely share disinformation pushed by Russia have also been spreading the video accusing USAID of paying Hollywood stars to travel to Ukraine.
On February 5, the X account “Russia Informa,” which has almost 80,000 followers, shared the video with claims such as “USAID paid Hollywood stars to visit Kyiv after the start of the special operation. The E!News portal published the details. Angelina Jolie cost the most: 20 million.” Also the Telegram channel “Irinamar,” which claims to share content with a “Russian view of the special operation in Ukraine,” or “Wars and Geopolitics”, among others, published a post that same day.
On February 6, it was shared by the website Spanish News Pravda, a website that is part of the Pravda ecosystem and that, according to the Viginum agency, belonging to the General Secretariat of National Defense and Security of France, “one of its main objectives is to spread disinformation and pro-Russian propaganda in different EU languages”. In Spain, Spanish News Pravda has published disinformation such as the hoax about Felipe VI’s motorcade in Valencia after the passage of the DANA or the hoax that Coca-Cola had donated mobile morgues with its logo to Ukraine. On this occasion, Spanish News Pravda published it on two occasions (1 and 2).
Liu Sivaya also shared the E!News video on the 6th on her X account, where she has nearly 200,000 followers.
Between February 5 and 6, it was also actively disseminated “by Russian propaganda outlets, including Tsargrad, Russia Today, EurAsia Daily, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Military Review, and Vesti,” explain Georgian fact-checkers Myth Detector, who have also verified the content. They add that it was shared not only by Kremlin-controlled outlets, “but also by networks affiliated with the Georgian government, including the pro-government POSTV, several media channels, as well as individual accounts,” as they identify in the published article.
Only six of the 42 disinformation contents have Community Notes
At the time of publication of this text, 85.7% of the contents analysed (i.e. 37 out of 42) are circulating on X without community notes. Only in six of the more than 40 cases does the warning system of Elon Musk's platform indicate that they are disinformation content. These posts are written in Spanish (3), German (1), French (1) and English (1). None of the contents with more than 5,000 views that have been taken into account in this analysis in Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch or Romanian contain these messages.
Those cases in which the Community Notes have been applied do not reach 125.000 views in any single post. In fact, the tweet with the most impact that Maldita.es has found with this narrative (which has, as of the date of publication of this text, more than 15.8 million views) does not have a visible warning, more than 36 hours after its publication. It is the first post in a thread in English that states that “USAID paid Ben Stiller 4 million dollars to take these photos with Zelensky.” This message is accompanied by two images (which are real) of the American actor and comedian with the president of Ukraine.
Community Notes is the system implemented in X that allows users to add context to misleading tweets. Although this is only selected and displayed when it is rated as useful by enough contributors with “different points of view.” In fact, there are actually notes proposed in the tweet with more than 15.8 million views, as mentioned above. And why are they not displayed? Due to a lack of consensus between contributors, who present “different points of view” according to the platform’s rules.
This is precisely one of the points to improve the X Community Notes system identified by Maldita.es in its analysis. One of the problems it raises is that many of the notes that are proposed and that refute viral misinformation are never shown to users. It also points against the need for consensus among users, who tend to disagree.
Thus, several contexts have been identified in which community notes have not been sufficient to combat hoaxes. For example, during the disinformation campaign that emerged on social networks as a result of the DANA of October 2024: out of 176 tweets analysed with disinformation narratives about heavy rains, only 8.5% had visible community notes. They were also not enough to stop the spread of the hoax of the video of the European Parliament applauding the launch of missiles from Ukraine to Russia. This content was spread in at least five different languages on X and none of those analysed by Maldita.es had community notes.
61.9% of posts are from users with a blue tick, but that does not mean they are trustworthy
A common factor detected in this analysis is that most of the accounts that have shared the narrative about USAID allegedly paying US celebrities to visit Ukraine in X pay the premium version. Of the 42 pieces of content analysed, 37 were published by users with the so-called blue tick (61.9% of the total). In fact, among the ten most viral tweets, there is only one tweet that does not have the blue tick.
The blue tick is no longer synonymous with the fact that a profile is verified and is who it claims to be. Now, this badge is obtained by paying a subscription fee, so anyone can access it. This change may give a false sense of security to the user viewing the content on their device.
This disinformative narrative is circulated in at least nine languages within X
The contents that have had the greatest impact so far are those disseminated in English. Of the 42 analysed by Maldita.es, 13 have been published in English. In total, they have had more than 18.4 million views (an average of 1.4 million per publication).
The content in French, meanwhile, has an average of 106,000 views per tweet. The nine tweets taken into account for this analysis reach almost one million reproductions (958,821 views in total).
Although to a lesser extent and with less impact, content in Portuguese, Spanish, German and Romanian was also found. Four publications in each of these languages were used in this analysis. Of this group, those published in Portuguese and Spanish have had the greatest reach (with an average of 61,000 and 44,000 reproductions, respectively). There were also three tweets in Italian (with 44,000 total views) and two in Polish (with a total of 11,765 views) and one in Dutch (with 20,100 views).
These 42 pieces of content do not reflect the full impact of the dissemination of this narrative. During the analysis, Maldita.es has located dozens of tweets in localized languages with less than 5,000 views. In addition, this misinformation has been shared on X by Elon Musk, the owner of the platform with 216.4 million followers, and Donald Trump Junior, son of the US president, with 14.2 million followers on this social network.
Primera fecha de publicación de este artículo: 07/02/2025
