There was no outrage in Norwegian society or in the country’s media. Propagandists took an opinion column by a Norwegian journalist that was aimed at criticising Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, not Ukraine or Zelensky. The author of that column stated himself that Norway should support Ukraine fully.
Russian media circulated reports that “Norway is outraged over Zelensky’s secret visit” to the funeral of King Harald V, and that the authorities “tried until the last moment to conceal” his arrival in Oslo from the public. Zelensky himself, the reports claim, made no comment on the possible visit. The source given is a publication by the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.
The Dagbladet piece, however, contains not a word about outrage — not from the authorities, not from politicians, not from the newsroom itself. It ran in the paper’s “kjendis” section (celebrity news) under the neutral headline “Zelensky is in Norway” and is an ordinary notice of the arrival of high-ranking guests for the funeral. It voices no grievance against Ukraine or against the Norwegian government.
The central fact the retelling omits: the visit was officially confirmed. “This was confirmed by the prime minister’s office in a press release on Tuesday evening,” Dagbladet’s text says. The same article carries a public comment from Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on the substance of the talks: “Ukraine has a critical need for air defence and other military support, and a hard winter lies ahead. Among the topics of the talks is how Norwegian military and civilian support can best meet Ukraine’s needs right now.”
Dagbladet also explains why the Ukrainian president’s flight routes are not announced in advance: “For security reasons, Zelensky’s team rarely reports where he is heading before the plane has landed.” The soundness of that practice was borne out almost immediately.
Nor was the visit a secret to the world’s media: Zelensky’s arrival on Sept. 8 was reported by Reuters, AFP, The Local Norway and other outlets. Ukrainian and English-language media also described in detail the working part of the trip, which the Russian retelling ignores entirely: as the Kyiv Independent reports, Zelensky held talks with Støre, Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide on air defence, the need for interceptor missiles, the FREYJA anti-ballistic programme and Ukraine’s preparations for winter. Zelensky also met the heads of defence companies from partner countries. This was covered by Ukrainska Pravda and European Pravda. Zelensky himself gave a public account of the meetings on his social media.
A few days later, propaganda outlets released a sequel — claiming that Zelensky had “used the funeral to ask for money.” This time the source is described as a “Norwegian financial news site,” Investornytt, and its text is introduced with the phrase “the outlet noted,” as though it were an editorial statement of fact. It is in fact an opinion column. It appears in the “kommentar” section, is marked “Leder” (editorial) and is signed by the site’s editor-in-chief, Markus N. Reitan. Investornytt itself is a small niche subscription site covering business and the stock market, not a national outlet on the scale of NRK, Aftenposten or VG. The opinion of the editor of a specialist financial publication is neither Norway’s position nor a news report.
In translation, the meaning of the column’s key phrase was altered. The original says it is “tactless to give a funeral visit a side agenda of weapons and money” (å gi begravelsesbesøket en sideagenda). In the Russian retelling this became “tactless to be distracted by the subject of weapons and money during the funeral ceremony” — creating the impression that the talks took place at the memorial service itself. The author of the column writes the opposite in plain terms: the meeting between Støre and Zelensky took place on Sept. 8, the evening before the funeral, and the ceremony itself was held the following day.
The substance of the complaint is lost as well. The column is primarily about Norwegian domestic politics: the author is indignant that the parties declared a “borgfred” — a two-week pause in political debate until the funeral — which he calls “a paid holiday from argument,” since parliamentary salaries continued to accrue throughout. The reproach is aimed at the prime minister, not at his guest: “Støre should have had enough judgement to keep these matters apart,” and the text closes with the words: “Støre should have said: we will hold the talks after the funeral.” The author also concedes that “there is a practical argument in favour of the meeting: the president is already in Oslo. And a working meeting is not a party-political quarrel,” and that “if an urgent military decision cannot wait, then of course it has to be dealt with.”
StopFake has previously debunked similar manipulations about the Ukrainian president’s foreign trips in Fake: Ukrainian President Leaves Kyiv in a Haste.
