Elon Musk has retweeted the fabricated piece of Russian propaganda below, on his X feed. The fake news story appears to have been designed by Russian disinformation network Matryoshka.
The fact that Musk retweeted it to his 216 million followers is a major coup for Matryoshka.
The fake video is designed appear to have been published on E! news. It falsely alleges that USAID sent US celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, to Ukraine to support the Ukrainian cause.
However, E! spokeman confirmed the video "is not authentic and did not originate from E! News". Ben Stiller, one of the actors named in the video, denied that his trip to Ukraine was funded by USAID, writing on X: "These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false." Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, posted that the video has "every indication of being a Russian fabricated video planted and spread using familiar methods."
Elon Musk appears to have since deleted the post.
