In early July 2023, information was spreading that the weapons delivered to the United States in Ukraine were in the hands of the French protesters who shot him at the police. We checked whether this is so.
June 27 is a policeman Shot 17-year-old young man of North African origin during the detention in the suburbs of Paris. Soon throughout France, mass protests began, lasting several days. They were accompanied by arson of cars and buildings, beating windows and clashes with the police. At least several hundred people were detained, dozens law enforcement officers And protesters They were injured.
About weapons delivered to the United States and other countries in Ukraine, and then found in the hands of French protesters in early July wrote A number of Russian -speaking media. TV channel “Tsargrad" He argued that “in large cities of Ukraine there are illegal groups that redeem the delivered weapons and transport it to Europe”, the Belarusian “National television"And the Russian site Eadaily wrote about the seizure of two such rifles, and the “arguments and facts” released article Under the heading “Friendly Fire. Kyiv supplies the rifles of French pogromers. " July 6 that the weapons delivered to Kyiv are in the hands of the protesters and is applied against the police, She said At a briefing, the official representative of the Foreign Ministry of Russia Maria Zakharova.
The news spread widely in Telegram. In particular, the channel post "Especially for RT"(291,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) on this topic Shared TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov (231,000), and the channel “Ostashko! Important "(123,000) Published Photos of allegedly confiscated from protesting large -caliber rifles manufactured by Accuracy International. According to the TGSTAT service, such posts together collected at least 10 million views. Some bloggers Tied These messages with recent plot About the weapons put in Ukraine, which was then allegedly discovered in Mexico.
During the protests, cases of looting were recorded, including hacking weapons store in Marseille and theft ammunition in Bordeaux. However, no reports of Ukrainian army weapons and specifically about the protesting rifles were reported by either the French police or authoritative local media. Russian publications, such as arguments and facts, mention that Le Figaro wrote about this, but on the website of the French newspaper in general Not detected Mentioning in connection with the protests of any rifles or Accuracy International from June 27 to the day of publication of this analysis. There is only news On the robbery of a weapon store in Marseille with the mention of shooting from a pump gun (Fusil à pompe).
Messages about the use of weapons from Ukraine appeared no earlier than July 1, on the fifth day of the riots. All publications are accompanied by the same screenshot, as claimed, of a certain English -language news site. The headline in the screenshot reports that “the French police were fired from American rifles that could get to France from Ukraine”, the word “could” often omitted in Russian and claims that the weapons were seized by the police. At the same time, there are no references to the English-language source, and there is no information in the screenshot to identify the resource on which such material could appear.
Judging by the data Search In Google, monotonous messages with the screenshot attached are not related to the media and initially began to spread in the Russian and English-language segment of Telegram. Presumably, the first such post was published in the channel "Signal"(566,000 views) July 1 at 13:39 Moscow time, for the first time an indication of the company Accuracy International, which was absent in the screenshot, appeared there. By midnight, this information turned out to be at least 270 other channels, collecting over 5 million views in an incomplete 10 and a half hours. By the evening of the same day, the post fell into the English -language segment Twitter (and in one of the first tweets in English specified Russian -speaking source), and during the day Later -On the site of the 9GAG memes.
Using a reverse search tool for a picture in the service Tineye “Verified” found out that a photograph of rifles, which illustrated viral posts, was taken back in 2012 by a photographer Vitaly Kuzmin And Available At the Wikisklada. In addition, these rifles are not American, their produces British company Accuracy International. Various models of its products are available in the open market - and not only a military, but also Police and hunters, They Used all over the world and regularly enter the ratings of the best sniper weapons on specialized sites. Apparently, the picture of these rifles was taken to create a misinformation plot solely because of the fame of the manufacturer and last year publications The fact that certain models of Accuracy International may enter the service of Ukrainian snipers.
Thus, data from open sources do not confirm the presence or confiscation of French protesting rifles production of Accuracy International or any others. No authoritative French media published articles dedicated to the "Ukrainian rifles" and shooting from them at police officers, and the distribution of these statements began with the Russian -language segment of the Internet. The screenshot of an unknown site, used as evidence, is fabricated, and it used a picture taken more than ten years ago.
Photo on the cover: Vitaly Kuzmin
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