The claim is false: the president came back from his trip and worked in the capital before leaving on his next visit, which had been planned in advance. The Norwegian outlet cited in the posts is a well-known mouthpiece for Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories.
Rumors citing an article by the Norwegian outlet Steigan are circulating online, alleging that Volodymyr Zelensky is deliberately dragging out his trips abroad to avoid returning to Ukraine. The authors claim the president is purposely looking for new places to visit, just so he can stay away from a country with no electricity and an “economy collapsing before our eyes.”
The claim is untrue. Zelensky has indeed made a series of foreign trips recently, but he returned to Ukraine in between them. On Nov. 3, the president arrived in Berlin on an unannounced visit and met Chancellor Merz, President Steinmeier and Bundestag President Klöckner. By Nov. 4 he was in Madrid. There he named stronger air defenses and defense cooperation as his priorities, and he also met the heads of the Congress and the Senate as well as defense manufacturers. On Nov. 6 the president was working in Ukraine, where he held a meeting on energy supply and announced personnel changes in the Armed Forces. On Nov. 8 he chaired a regional meeting with the heads of all regional administrations on the situation in frontline and border regions and communities. On Nov. 10, Zelensky left for Denmark for meetings with Prime Minister Frederiksen, Nordic leaders and defense companies, and Denmark sent a new aid package worth about €643 million. Claims that the president is deliberately putting off his return to Ukraine are therefore manipulative.
The Norwegian outlet cited in the posts deserves a closer look. Steigan is run by the communist activist Pål Steigan and is known as one of the main channels for pro-Russian content in Norway’s media space. Norwegian fact-checkers at Faktisk.no found that from January 2021 to March 2022, 87% of the site’s articles cited sources “clearly subordinate to the Russian authorities.” The site reproduced without question Russian claims that the strike on the Mariupol maternity hospital was “a grand staging meant to impress the West.” It also described the events in Bucha as “part of a media campaign aimed at dehumanizing Russian soldiers.” Notably, one of the outlet’s contributors is Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian now living in the US who actively pushes narratives about “neo-Nazism in Ukraine” in the media. The article accusing Zelensky of dragging out his trips was written by Vladimir Fedorov. Fedorov founded the Norwegian outlet Perspektiv and is a member of the Peace and Justice party (FOR). In 2025 the party campaigned against aid to Ukraine, and it is funded by the businessman Atle Berge. Berge does extensive business in Russia. He has called the cars and ambulances Norway gave Ukraine “good bomb targets,” and he sponsors orphanages in Russia where abducted Ukrainian children are held. In short, Steigan does not speak for mainstream Norwegian opinion. It works instead as a gathering point for fringe figures with direct or indirect ties to the Russian authorities, who keep promoting narratives that serve the Kremlin’s interests.
We have examined another Nordic “expert,” the activist Armando Mema, who has almost no following at home but appears regularly in Russian media, in our piece Manipulation: Finland Admits NATO Membership Was a Mistake.
