What was claimed: A video shows the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, calling Vladimir Putin a "butcher" and commenting on his "war crimes" during a press conference with US president Donald Trump.
Our verdict: This isn't quite right. Mr Macron referred to killings in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and mentioned war crimes, but did not describe President Putin as a "butcher".
Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy buy the French bank Milleis in February 2025 using the offshore company Maltex? No, that's not true: No credible media organization reported this story, as of March 6, 2025. A viral video purporting to be a TV news report about it displayed a non-existent TV channel logo. And the video contained inauthentic, AI-generated audio, according to two AI detectors.
Claim: Volodymyr Zelenskyy wore a suit while meeting Emmanuel Macron and Klaus Schwab, but opted for a non-formal sweatshirt during his visit to the Oval Office.
Fact: Photos of Zelenskyy with Macron and Schwab were taken prior to the Russian invasion of February 2022.
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.
