In February 2024, media and Telegram channels distributed a recording that allegedly captured an excerpt from a news broadcast on French television dedicated to the failed trip of the country's president to Kyiv. We checked how true such publications are.
News items and posts on social networks refer to a video showing a TV showing the broadcast of the France 24 TV channel. The presenter claims that they wanted to kill French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to Kyiv. Vladimir Zelensky was named as the organizer of the assassination attempt - the Ukrainian leader allegedly planned to blame the attack on Russia in order to draw attention to the war and increase the amount of assistance from the West. The story contains screenshots from which it allegedly follows that preparations for the operation were coordinated by the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov. It is noted that the assassination plan failed due to the ex-commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, who passed on the information to the French, after which Macron did not fly to Kyiv.
This was reported "Regnum", News.ru, Life, Lenta.ru, OTR and other Russian media. Among the officials, the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, ex-president, commented on the situation Dmitry Medvedev. The video was actively distributed by Telegram channels: “Live broadcast"(617,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Pozdnyakov 3.0» (318,000), Ne.Sugar (245,000), "Russia now"(224,000) and others.
Macron's visit to Ukraine was planned for February 13-14, the French president was supposed to visit Odessa and Kyiv. However, February 11 edition Challenges citing a source at the Elysee Palace reported that the trip was postponed, in particular, for security reasons. The journalists did not provide any other details, and the presidential administration also did not make additional statements on this matter.
The viral video began spreading on social networks on the evening of February 13. In the lower right corner of the picture on the TV screen you can see the logo of the France 24 TV channel.
A news anchor in French says: “French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to cancel his visit to Ukraine due to an assassination attempt being planned on him. According to a source close to the National Intelligence Council, this attempt was stopped by the French intelligence services, who managed to intercept the correspondence and calls of the participants in the assassination attempt. According to the plan of the Ukrainian authorities, the attack was supposed to once again attract the attention of the world community to Ukraine and allow an increase in the supply of weapons to Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities planned to shift responsibility for the attack on the French President to the Russian side and accuse the country of terrorist methods of warfare.”
The video also shows screenshots of personal correspondence in Telegram, however, due to the low quality, only individual words in Ukrainian can be made out.
In the frame is a real presenter of France 24 Julien Fancuy, he has been covering news on this channel since 2007. However, on the official YouTube channel This media outlet, as well as in other authoritative French publications, “Verified”, was unable to find any reports about an assassination attempt on Macron being prepared in Ukraine. Let us note that the news in French was not, in principle, disseminated by any serious sources.
At the beginning of the story, you can see a subtitle talking about the release of two Israeli hostages in Rafah. This topic was actually discussed on France 24 on February 12, only the signature was issued a little differently, with a picture on the side.
On the same day, French media reported other news, appearing in the credits, so the basis for the viral video was most likely the real broadcast of France 24. At the same time, obvious mistakes are also striking - for example, Fancuy’s articulation in the video does not always correspond to speech, and from the 31st to 33rd seconds you can see how the teeth of his lower jaw suddenly “jump” to the upper one.
All this suggests that the video was created using a neural network. The same conclusion was made on the France 24 television channel. Answering upon request from the TASS agency, they denied their attitude to this news. Later the channel released two revealing plot about the video. Among other things, French journalists noticed that filming was used from a TV screen - poor quality, in their opinion, was intended to hide traces of the intervention. Also the information provided in the video, denied representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Andrey Yusov.
According to the TGStat service, the first video on Telegram was posted by the channel “Cat Kostyan» February 13 at 20:43 Moscow time. “Verified” has repeatedly exposed this resource in spreading fakes related to Ukraine, including those created under help neural networks.
Macron accepted Zelensky in Paris on February 16. The presidents signed a bilateral agreement on security guarantees that will remain in effect until Ukraine joins NATO.
Cover photo: screenshot from video
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