Pro-Kremlin disinformation operators have tried to smear, delegitimise and humiliate Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy since his election in 2019. We have documented hundreds of attacks against him and other Ukrainian officials.

When US President Trump and Vice President Vance publicly argued with Zelenskyy on 28 February, mouthpieces of the Kremlin and their underlings in the disinformation ecosystem unsurprisingly relished discussing the meeting in great detail. They portrayed the Ukrainian war-time leader as ‘drug-addicted’, ‘delusional’,(opens in a new tab) ‘psychologically inadequate’, ‘incompetent’, ‘corrupt’, and believe it or not, a ‘Cocaine Fuhrer’.