No, weapons for Ukraine were not used in French riots

Introduction

A false rumor on Twitter has been traced by the BBC back to pro-Kremlin propaganda channels.

The deliberately misleading Twitter post falsely claims that weapons possibly among those sent to Ukraine were used against police in the recent riots in France (summer 2023). The attached image shows a fabricated “screenshot” of a non-existent news article.

BBC Verify reports:

Many misleading posts have been shared online about the recent riots in France, but one viral post last week focused on US military aid to Ukraine.

It featured a screenshot of what appeared to be a headline from a news website, along with an image of two rifles.

“French police are fired upon with American rifles that may have come from Ukraine,” reads the headline.

Several Twitter accounts with Blue subscriptions have shared the post, which has been viewed more than a million times.

BBC Verify has traced it back to pro-Kremlin channels on the Telegram messaging app. The image used in the post appears in a Russian military blog from 2012 about a shooting competition held on a firing range near Moscow.

We have also been unable to find any online articles with the headline and picture as above, and there is no evidence any weapons provided to Ukraine by the US have been used during the recent unrest in France.


Summary

The rumor of weapons sent to Ukraine being used against French police in the recent riots is false.

The fake “article screenshot” and Russian photo source indicate that this Tweet is an example of deliberately falsified disinformation – not incorrect info spread in good faith.

Thank you to Shayan Sardarizadeh and the rest of the team at BBC Verify for this reporting.

All sources:

The timeline of events in Bucha is critical to understanding events around the 2022 massacre. Many narratives about Bucha hinge entirely on the order of events, and on the dates of certain pieces of evidence. In this article, we lay
April 5 (Reuters) - Satellite images taken weeks ago of the town of Bucha in Ukraine show bodies of civilians on a street, a private U.S. company said, undercutting the Russian government's claims that Ukrainian forces caused the deaths or
Fake news is flooding our social media - but you can spot it if you know what to look for. Not sure if a headline is fake news or not? Here are three tips to check whether a story is
"Presidents do not usually record addresses like this. But today I have to say just that. After what was revealed in Bucha and our other cities the occupiers were expelled from. Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses
Anatolii Fedoruk, Mayor of Bucha of Kyiv Region said that on 31 March, the city was liberated from the Russian occupiers.
Russian propaganda channel RT Arabic asked the Israel's IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee about "Ukraine providing Western weaponry to Hamas" several times. Lt. Colonel Adraee replied: "I do not comment on such fabrications and lies.”
“Bellingcat: Ukrainian military offensive failure and HAMAS attack linked,” opening text on the video claimed. But the BBC never published that report, and the underlying claim is unsubstantiated.
CLAIM: A video shows a BBC News report confirming Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The widely shared video clip is fabricated. Officials with the BBC and Bellingcat, an investigative news website that is cited in the video
As of 31 October 2022, OHCHR – through the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) – had documented summary executions and attacks on individual civilians in 102 villages and towns of the three regions between 24 February
Postmortem changes refer to various processes that occur in a body after death producing a variety of effects. These changes can be divided into early and late time periods, the latter represented by decomposition, however the entire process represents a continuum. While the