On the eve of May 9, 2024, reports began to spread in the Russian media and social networks that French Air Force pilots mixed up the order of the colors of their national flag and accidentally depicted the state symbol of Russia in the sky. We have verified the accuracy of the video provided as evidence.
The torch relay for the Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris this summer, began this spring. April 16th lit in Olympia, the first stage of the relay traditionally took place in Greece. April 27 flame went to France on board a sailboat "Belem", which was launched shortly after the first Olympics in modern history in 1896. On May 8, the ship arrived in Marseille, where a ceremony was held at the port. In the evening of the same day in the Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir"(158,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) a post was published with a video according to which French planes depicted the flag of Russia, not France, in the sky. Further publications specified that they were flown by pilots from the elite Patrouille de France aerobatic team.
May 9 about the video with the alleged embarrassment of the pilots with reference to “Constantinople”told many Russian media. According to the material on the channel’s website, “three planes (actually there were eight of them. - Note: “Checked”) unexpectedly sprayed the Russian national flag in the sky over NATO territory.” The author of the article made the assumption that the pilots mixed up the order of blue and white colors. “The three horizontal stripes - blue, white, red - turned out to be similar to the Russian flag, while on the French flag the same colors are displayed vertically,” explains “Russian newspaper" IN "Arguments and facts» clarified that the French leadership did not react in any way to the incident, which led to some investigations. Similar publications about the Russian tricolor over Marseille were published by the news agency “Regnum", newspapers "Sight" And "Moskovsky Komsomolets", Lenta.ru, Ura.ru, "Vesti.ru", "Let's look", News.ru, "Prime", "Reporter", State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company "Murman", "Notebook» and other resources. However, not all publications agreed that the mistake occurred on May 8 during the ceremony for welcoming the Olympic flame, for example, according to the newspaper “Life", the video was recorded on May 9 at the parade in honor of the celebration Europe Day.
According to TGStat, at the time of writing this analysis the news about the alleged error French pilots received a total of at least 15 million views on Telegram. A viral video with “confused” flags was published in the channels of TV presenters Vladimir Solovyov (twice: 240,000 And 202,000 views), Irena Ponaroshku (148,000), Lera Kudryavtseva (121,000), Ruslana Ostashko (107,000), Olesya Loseva (69,000) and Oscar Kucera (35,000), public figure Ekaterina Mizulina (209,000), media managers Christina Potupchik (24,000), and Mash (1 million), "Live broadcast"(769,000), "Sanya in Florida"(528,000), "Pozdnyakov 3.0"(430,000), "Dmitry Nicotin"(357,000), "Ax Live"(353,000, post deleted), "ZeRada"(309,000), "Rhymes and news"(309,000), Fighterbomber (305,000), "The goat screamed"(270,000), "KB"(247,000), etc. Also, the viral video received millions of views on other platforms: VKontakte (examples here, here And here), TikTok (here, here And here) and social network X (including on French, Arabic And English languages).
“Verified” was unable to determine the original source of the viral 18-second video, however, based on indirect evidence (landscape, number of planes, date and time of distribution of the video), we can say with a high degree of confidence that the recording was actually made on May 8 in Marseille. Journalists of the American fact-checking project Lead Stories, French online publication TF1 Info and TV channel France 24 They also believe that this video is genuine and that it was taken at an event in honor of the arrival of the Olympic flame in France.
According to all photo and video reports from the celebration at the official resources Olympics and publications sets French Media, during the event, Patrouille de France planes using colorful smoke portrayed Olympic rings and blue-white-red in the sky France flag. "Verified" did not find any reports of incorrect color sequences in the reputable international press.
At the same time, it is unlikely that the French media and authorities would be able to hide such an incident that occurred in front of dozens thousands of spectators, especially since there was already a precedent. On July 14, 2018, during the traditional military parade on Bastille Day, an embarrassment occurred in the sky above the Parisian Arc de Triomphe: instead of the country’s tricolor flag, nine Patrouille de France aircraft released a red-blue-white-red smoke sheet. There are many videos and photos taken on the Internet that day, they wrote about that incident and many French-speaking publications. And although some spectators countedthat in this way the pilots symbolically showed the blood shed by the French Armed Forces, representatives of the Air Force admitted that this was a mistake, and apologized for her. “The plane that flew with this red smoke screen instead of the blue one was a spare. Since it had to be ready to replace any aircraft, it was loaded with several colors,” told after the parade, Lieutenant Colonel Maud Grolier.
As for the video distributed in May 2024, the white-blue-red (as on the Russian flag) smoke screen appeared there due to an optical effect. For example, at the beginning of the smoke release process, you can clearly see how one of the blue stripes overlaps the white one, that is, the plane “charged” with blue was flying closer to the camera than the plane with white smoke.
On social network X, this video was shared among others by an English-language pro-Kremlin account Lord Bebo (840,000 views). Soon, an addition from Community Notes appeared under his tweet - using this tool, platform users can add important context that the author missed or deliberately hid from the audience. In a note with reference to video, posted on the official account of the Olympic Games, it was claimed that the pilots did not mix up the colors, and the Russian flag was visible only because of the shooting angle. Blogger named this is a “shameless lie,” he showed a comparison of screenshots of two videos and called on his subscribers to rate the note as unhelpful (in this case, the label is removed from the tweet - this is what happened with Lord Bebo’s original post).
The fact is that during the ceremony, planes flew over Marseille more than once, and Lord Bebo chose the wrong flight for comparison. Full broadcast parade was published on the official YouTube channel of the Olympic Games. According to the recording, the pilots first drew in the air olympic rings, and then several times with the help of multi-colored smoke they depicted the French flag - for us only last flight, when the planes were not at the same level, but flew under each other in three rows (at the end of this formation the pilots scattered in different directions). It can be seen that with this configuration, planes with white smoke fly higher and slightly ahead of planes with blue and red curtains.
Apparently, it was precisely this construction that led to the fact that from some angles it seemed to the audience that blue smoke was sprayed between white and red. We decided to test this assumption by studying other videos. Thus, TikTok user under the nickname MarionNrd_ published video with a similar shooting angle - you can also see a white-blue-red color sequence there. At the same time, from another point at a great distance the order is the opposite: white, red, blue, which confirms video clip by Karl Comont.
Thus, the French pilots did not make the mistake that caused the Russian tricolor to appear in the sky over Marseille. In fact, the planes painted the flag of France, but due to optical illusion and perspective, from some angles it could look like the state symbol of the Russian Federation. According to TF1 Info, On May 8 in Marseille, a similar effect was observed when shooting from a very limited number of points. Fact checkers from Lead Stories, in turn, suggest that the video was filmed from Porte du Frioul on the island of Ratonneau, approximately 5 km by water from the port, where the ceremony in honor of the arrival of the Olympic flame took place.
Cover photo: screenshot of video from social networks
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