Russian disinfo campaign claims Ukrainian oligarchs hid billions in aid money on remote “penguin islands” hit by Trump tariffs

RU

A Russian disinformation network has launched a fake news campaign spreading a creative take on Trump’s recently announced tariffs. As the Bot Blocker (@antibot4navalny) project has shared with The Insider, the purported reason the American president imposed trade duties on the uninhabited Australian territory of the Heard and McDonald Islands — home only to penguins and other forms of wildlife — stands out as implausible even among the Kremlin’s long list of absurd falsehoods past.

Russian-linked accounts on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram are circulating claims that seven Ukrainian oligarchs registered offshore firms on the islands, then funneled over €30 billion (more than $32 billion) in U.S. military aid into their accounts there. The islands, uninhabited and among the most isolated places on Earth, have no legal addresses or infrastructure, making company registration there effectively impossible.

“Penguin” disinfo in “print” and on video

The disinformation is presented in the form of articles and front pages mimicking well-known Western media outlets such as USA Today and the French daily La Croix — though no such covers “reporting” the offshore story exist.

“Heard Island and McDonald Islands have come under Trump’s ire due to the fact that seven Ukrainian oligarchs, involved in the plundering of £25.5bn of U.S. aid, have companies registered on them,” read one of the fake covers, posing as the Hull Daily Mail — a regional newspaper for Kingston upon Hull in northeast England.