Russia to sell off Zelensky’s holiday home to fund war in Ukraine

Russian officials recently announced that they were nationalizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's holiday home on the Black Sea to raise money for the war effort. 

Sergey Aksyonov is the Russian-backed leader of Crimea and announced On May 21st the local legislature voted in favor of nationalizing several Ukrainian-owned properties. 

“Crimea will regain rights for a number of properties,” the Crimean leader explained in a video message about the new nationalization according to a report from The Telegraph. 

Askyonov added that one building in Simferopol belonging to the now-banned Crimean Tatar Parliament would be seized as well as a flat that was owned by Volodymyr and Olena Zelensky. 

The Telegraph also noted that the Crimean legislature had voted to nationalize a total of fifty-seven properties that were owned by "political figures and tycoons" from Ukraine. 

“Enemies of Russia won’t be making money in Russian Crimea,” Aksyonov explained in his video recording. But what do we know about Zelenksky’s holiday home in Crimea? 

Unfortunately, details on Zelensky’s property are scant but we do know it was bought in 2013 in the coastal Black Sea town of Livadia according to The Telegraph’s reporting. 

It was also reported that the Ukrainian President never got to live in his holiday home because of renovations and then the 2014 annexation that saw Russia take control of the region. 

In 2019, Reuters reported that Olena Zelensky had acquired the holiday property from business tycoon Oleksandr Buryak for less than half the market rate at the time of the purchase. 

Olena paid $163,893 dollars for the three-bedroom penthouse suite in April 2013, or so Reuters reported, noting the information came from an income and assets declaration. 

The Telegraph noted the property was worth an estimated $800,000 dollars now, which would make it a nice bit of propaganda cash to help fund Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. 

"Of course, it’s not a big loss for him," said the speaker of Crimea’s legislature Vladimir Konstantinov according to a translation from The Russian News Agency (TASS).

In a separate interview, TASS journalists noted Konstantinov told Rossiya-24 that all the nationalized properties would be sold off to “finance the special military operation.”

Aid will also go to the families of the soldiers that have been killed in action as well as to those who had a family member called up to fight during the partial military mobilization The Telegraph reported. 

"The policy will have a social aspect," Konstantinov said according to the reporting from TASS, which noted a total of 700 Ukrainian properties had been taken since the fall. 

The Telegraph noted everything from vineyards to factories had been nationalized and sold but also pointed out: “It was not clear where the proceeds from that sell-off went.”