The French media La Montagne did not publish an article entitled "Sanctions against Russia led to a bedbug epidemic in Paris." Most likely, a screenshot of this publication was created in a photo editor. Mass appearances of bedbugs are not related to anti-Russian sanctions, but to the insects adapting to insecticides, climate change and people beginning to travel more in crowded transport.
The photo on the billboard is fake. Moreover, the picture used captures a traffic stop in Denmark's capital Copenhagen, and not in France. French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the Crimea platform on August 23, once again emphasized that France does not recognize Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territories.
A number of Russian Telegram channels have been sharing a caricature of French President Emmanuel Macron depicted as a rooster, claiming that it was broadcast by FRANCE 24 in a programme that aired on March 13. However, the image circulating is a doctored version of the cover of a French magazine called L'Hémicycle. The FRANCE 24 clip has also been doctored to include it.
Pro-Russian social media users have been widely circulating what looks like a Euronews report showing French farmers dumping manure outside the Ukrainian embassy. French farmers began protesting for better pay in January and the video claims that the farmers took the drastic manure action after the Ukrainian ambassador penned a letter asking them to stop their protests. But this video is fake. It's one of a series of fake news reports aimed at making Ukraine look bad in the eyes of the West.
Dutch researchers have revealed that coordinated networks of accounts spreading disinformation flooded social media in France, Germany and Italy before the elections to the European Parliament.
The fake Cruise video, which appeared on the Telegram messaging platform last year, is called Olympics Has Fallen and uses artificial intelligence-generated audio of the film star's voice to present a 'strange, meandering script' disparaging the IOC. The documentary, whose title riffs on the Gerard Butler action film Olympus Has Fallen, also claims falsely to have been produced by Netflix and is promoted with bogus five-star reviews from the New York Times and the BBC.
Overnight on May 14, the Holocaust Memorial in Paris was vandalized with red hand graffiti, a symbol considered anti-Semitic by Jews. The French police were able to track down three suspects of Bulgarian origin through video surveillance, believed to be Russian henchmen hired to deface the memorial. The same modus operandi was used back in October, when Stars of David were painted on Paris walls.
Social media users are sharing a viral video that purports to show French pilots painting a Russian flag in the sky, instead of a French one, during Marseille's Olympic flyover event. We explain if this was an accident or rather an optical illusion, in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Recent months have seen a spike in disinformation about NATO and Ukraine's allies on social media, following French President Emmanuel Macron's comments on sending Western ground troops to fight in Ukraine. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Social media users have been sharing false claims that the Ukrainian army sold two of the heavy-duty CAESAR howitzers - given by France - to Russia for $120,000 per unit. In this edition of Truth or Fake with Vedika Bahl, we look into the source of these rumours - which are based on false posts from two years ago - and why the outlet behind them is not trustworthy.
