On October 28, 2026, the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation at the NSDC reported a Russian fake: Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska is allegedly opening a rehabilitation center in Israel named after her husband, President Volodymyr Zelensky. In reality, a certificate of registration of an Israeli company was fabricated for this story, and the front page of the Haaretz newspaper was altered. However, by the time of the refutation, the fabrication had already been spreading for several days through Russian Telegram channels, media, and bloggers.
Author: NANews Editorial
We write about the relations between Israel and Ukraine, so it is crucial for us not only to establish that the message is falsified but also to trace who spread it, what Israeli documents were used, and what was attempted to be instilled in the audience.
The NANews Israel News editorial team traced publications from October 23-24 and identified specific distribution platforms, including the resource of the state media group ‘Russia Today’. The story affects not only the reputation of the Ukrainian leadership: it uses the Israeli press, the local company registration system, and the existing medical cooperation between the two countries.
What was invented about Zelenska and how the Israeli newspaper was forged
The authors of the fake claimed that Olena Zelenska was creating a commercial clinic in Israel for addiction treatment. She was attributed with the desire to name the institution after Volodymyr Zelensky to present the president as a person who saves lives.
The messages being spread featured a quota: allegedly 15% of places are intended for free treatment of Ukrainian military personnel, while other patients must pay. The publications were accompanied by a fabricated quote from Zelenska that the path to a new life symbolically begins with her husband’s name. Neither this quote nor the stated treatment conditions have documentary confirmation.
The main ‘evidence’ was the front page of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for October 21, 2026. It featured the English headline Zelenskyy Rehabilitation Center in Israel, a photo of Zelenska, and an image of a registration document. For a reader unfamiliar with the original issue, this looked like a real publication of a well-known Israeli publication.
The second element is the certificate of registration of the company Rehab named after Zelensky LTD, allegedly issued on October 14. The combination of the English name, Hebrew, and official formatting created the impression that the project had undergone legal registration even before the news appeared.
How the forgery was uncovered: Haaretz, company registry, and a 2022 photo
On October 26, the Ukrainian project StopFake published a detailed debunking. Fact-checkers found the original front page of Haaretz for October 21 in the PressReader archive and compared it with the distributed image.
On the real page was an article about the unexpected visit of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to Israel and his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu on October 19. The material was accompanied by a photo of a street with election posters of Israeli politicians. The forgers replaced this article and photo, retaining the rest of the page’s layout, including the main headline about the elections in Israel. Hegseth’s visit is confirmed by a Reuters report.
The fake certificate also contains a verifiable error. The specified registration number is 468164815. In Israel, a company number, known as מספר חברה or ח.פ., consists of nine digits. For private companies, the prefix 51 is usually used, for public ones – 52, for foreign registered companies – 56. For other categories of corporations, there are separate prefixes, including 54, 55, and 58. The number of the fictional LTD starts with 4 and does not match the format of an Israeli company registration.
Such data is verified through the state Corporation Registry, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Israel. For an Israeli reader, this is a crucial detail: a beautiful document in Hebrew does not in itself confirm the existence of a legal entity.
The photo of Zelenska on the fake newspaper page turned out to be real but taken from another story. It was published on the official website of the President of Ukraine on May 13, 2022, when the First Lady held a video meeting with Agata Kornhauser-Duda, Diana Nausėdienė, and Brigitte Macron. They discussed Ukrainian refugees, treatment of children with oncological diseases, and psychological assistance to war victims. The photo had no relation to the Israeli clinic.
Where the fake came from: Russian Telegram channels, ‘Ukraine.ru’, and bloggers
The most important part of the check is the path of the story’s spread. The initial creator of the fake images has not yet been identified, but publications from October 23 have been preserved.
On this day, the Russian site Giport posted a material under the headline ‘Olena Zelenska opens a rehab named after V. Zelensky in Israel’. The publication appeared at 12:28, its author is listed as Maksim Posmetny, and the source is named as ‘Ukraine.ru’. The text repeated the story about addiction treatment, a 15% quota, and the allegedly commercial nature of the clinic. The Giport illustration was marked as created by artificial intelligence.
‘Ukraine.ru’ is not a random private Telegram blog. The publication is part of the Russian state media group ‘Russia Today’. According to the editorial’s own information, the project was founded in May 2014 at the initiative of the media group’s general director Dmitry Kiselev. A link to the used Telegram post has been preserved: https://t.me/ukr_2025_ru/343637.
In the archive of the Telegram channel ‘Highly Likely’, publication No. 73624 from October 23, 10:01 UTC was found. It repeated information about free places for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Zelenska’s fabricated words. Almost simultaneously, at 10:01:06 UTC, a similar text was published on Facebook by user Sergey Darwin. The message was later preserved by the MediaVault archive. These timestamps confirm early distribution but do not allow determining the original source.
The channel ‘Man from the 90s’ used the fake to mock the Ukrainian president, claiming that the center was primarily intended for Zelensky himself. Another trace was found in the archival description of the ‘Gasparyan’ broadcast on ‘SolovyovLIVE’ from October 23: the plot about the rehabilitation center is indicated at the 55:11 mark. The presence of this mention in the broadcast description is confirmed, but not the authorship of the fake.
On October 24, the story appeared in the St. Petersburg feed with a link to the channel ‘Mikhail Onufrienko’s World’ in the Russian messenger MAX. Onufrienko directly wrote that he considers the message a fake but used it for an anti-Semitic statement based on the stereotype about Jews and money.
This is a telling episode: even a story recognized as false continued to serve as a pretext for attacks. Russian platforms used one plot in different ways – from a pseudo-news with commercial details to insults to the President of Ukraine and anti-Semitic comments.
What Olena Zelenska actually did in Israel
This fabrication had a real background. Olena Zelenska was indeed involved in medical cooperation with Israel, especially in matters of psychological assistance and rehabilitation of war victims.
On May 17, 2022, Zelenska and Israel’s First Lady Michal Herzog discussed the training of Ukrainian specialists in dealing with post-traumatic disorders. It was also reported that about 7,000 Ukrainians had already received medical assistance from Israeli doctors. In July of that year, 27 Ukrainian mental health specialists completed training at the Israeli NATAL center, working with the consequences of war and terrorism.
NATAL is an Israeli organization specializing in psychological trauma. Its work includes helping people who have experienced combat, terrorist attacks, and other severe events. This experience was of practical interest to Ukraine.
On June 19, 2023, Zelenska visited Israel, met with President Isaac Herzog and Michal Herzog, visited the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, including the Safra Children’s Hospital and rehabilitation departments. They discussed assistance to children, treatment of post-traumatic conditions, and the transfer of Israeli experience to Ukrainian specialists. The program also included familiarization with the work of organizations dealing with psychological resilience and the experience of residents of Sderot living under the threat of rocket attacks.
Cooperation continues. In September 2026, NANews reported how Israel and the Kyiv region are discussing the expansion of rehabilitation, and 57 specialists from the region have already undergone Israeli training. It was about the Israel Trauma Coalition, training of doctors and psychologists, and the possible expansion of medical departments in Ukraine.
These projects are real. But none of them is proof of the existence of a commercial rehabilitation center named after Volodymyr Zelensky in Israel.
Why Israel was chosen again for an information attack
In such stories, Israel performs several functions at once. The name of a well-known newspaper gives the fabrication the appearance of independent confirmation, the registration document creates a sense of legal credibility, and the mention of medical rehabilitation makes the plot resemble a continuation of actual cooperation.
There is also a political meaning. The fake combines long-used accusations by Russian propaganda of Zelensky’s drug addiction, assumptions about the alleged preparation of his family to move abroad, and attempts to present assistance to Ukrainian military personnel as a way of private profit.
In June 2023, after Zelenska’s visit to Israel, an image of her fake Israeli passport was already being spread. The document contained a gross error: the expiration date allegedly ended on June 18, although the issuance date was June 19. In September 2026, fake passports of both spouses appeared again. Euronews and independent fact-checkers explained why the images are not real documents.
Forgery of a newspaper page is also not new. On May 19, 2026, The Jerusalem Post reported on a forged cover of its issue for May 12, aimed against Zelensky. Editor-in-chief Zvika Klein confirmed the forgery. In the same context, layouts of other international publications were used.
On October 22, a day before the discovered publications about the ‘rehab’, The Insider released an investigation into the Russian Agency for Social Design and influence operations in Israel. Based on the studied documents, journalists described fake pages of Walla, N12, and Mako, fake Israeli commentators, the use of the Hamas theme, and attempts to oppose US aid to Israel and Ukraine.
NANews thoroughly analyzed this investigation and the mention of our publication in the documents of Russian organizers. Back in 2024, we published material on Russian influence in Israel based on the Shomrim investigation, and in October 2026, we traced the spread of anti-Semitic fabrications about Hasidim, Ukrainian mobilization, and ‘Jewish autonomy’.
Documents studied by The Insider show the existence of organized Russian informational work in the Israeli direction. But there is no direct evidence that the Agency for Social Design specifically fabricated the fake Haaretz page at this time.
What is established and why this story is important for Israelis
The check as of October 28 allows us to confidently name several circumstances. The front page of Haaretz was altered, the registration document contained an unacceptable number for an Israeli LTD, and the photo of Zelenska was taken from a 2022 publication. Russian channels and sites have been spreading the fabrication since at least October 23, and among them was the Telegram resource of the state media group ‘Russia Today’.
Other questions remain open: who created the original images, in which channel they first appeared, whether there was a centralized directive to spread this particular story, and how many people saw the fake. The identified publications confirm the participation of specific distributors but do not themselves establish the customer.
For the Israeli audience, the problem is not limited to Zelensky’s name. By forging Haaretz and Ministry of Justice documents, the distributors use the reputation of Israeli institutions to lend credibility to political disinformation. At the same time, real assistance to Ukrainian patients and the training of specialists are replaced by a fictional commercial project.
As of October 28, 2026, there is no confirmation of the existence of the described ‘Zelensky Rehabilitation Center’. The falsification of published evidence, specific distribution channels, and the existence of previously documented information campaigns in which Israel was used to discredit Ukraine are confirmed.
Editorial check: October 28, 2026. Basis – message from the Center for Countering Disinformation at the NSDC of Ukraine, StopFake materials, original Haaretz front page in the PressReader archive, publications of Russian channels and media, official information on Ukraine-Israel cooperation, The Insider investigations, and previously published NANews materials. If evidence of the original authorship of the forgery appears, information about the source of distribution may be clarified.