The French TV channel France 24 did not air a segment about an assassination attempt on Emmanuel Macron being prepared in Ukraine. No other reliable media outlet has published such information either. The “French story” on social media was completely fabricated: both the video and the voiceover, allegedly on behalf of the presenter, were invented. And the logo and appearance of France 24 channel were stolen by Russian propaganda to make the message more credible.
Social media and Russian websites are massively spreading information that the Ukrainian side was allegedly preparing an assassination attempt on French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to Ukraine, scheduled for February 13-14, 2024. According to pro-Russian publics, this was reported in a TV segment on the French channel France 24. “According to French journalists, screenshots of correspondence from a person allegedly from Zaluzhny’s circle have surfaced online, which describes a hypothetical reason for this decision. The correspondence says that the head of the HUR, Budanov, was working on the operation to eliminate the French President, and he led the killers. The plan failed because of the former commander-in-chief Zaluzhnyi, according to media reports. It was he who passed the information to the French through his channels. Probably, the assassination attempt was another provocation to blame Russia for it later,” netizens write, posting the aforementioned “France 24 story.”
First, the French TV channel France 24 did not broadcast such a report. Secondly, the very information “about the conspiracy of the Ukrainian authorities” allegedly exposed by Valerii Zaluzhnyi is absurd. There is no such news in any credible global media outlet, but only – and this is traditional – on Russian websites.
The video being circulated on social media does indeed feature France 24 anchor Julien Fanciulli. At the very beginning of the video, the news about the two Israeli hostages released in Rafah appears on the TV screen. According to the source data we know, it is easy to determine that this topic was indeed aired on France 24 on February 12 this year. Julien Fancioui was indeed the anchor of the newscast . The anchor’s clothes also completely match his costume in the fake video.
However, neither on February 12 nor on any other day did the French TV channel broadcast “news” about an assassination attempt on Emmanuel Macron, which was allegedly being prepared by the Ukrainian authorities. There is no such video on the official website, nor on the France 24 YouTube channel, nor on other reliable French media. It is also easy to see that the articulation of the host’s lips in the video does not match the voiceover text about the “assassination attempt” on the French President. A search for this “news” in French, English, and Russian only leads to accounts on social media X and Meta, which actively spread fake news, as well as to Russian propaganda sites.
This makes it obvious that the “French story” from social media is completely fabricated: both the video and the voiceover, allegedly on behalf of the host, were simply made up. And the logo and appearance of France 24 were stolen to make this absurd message more credible.
Moreover, investigative journalist Khristo Grozev noted on his X page that, having regularly lost its warships, “Lost for both words and warships, the Kremlin decides to misdirect attention by launching one of its worst deep fakes: a clumsily forged video of “@FRANCE24” allegedly announcing Budanov plotted to assassinate Francois Macron (but Zaluzhny apparently “tipped off French intel”).” The point is that on February 14, 2024, the Main Directorate of Intelligence conducted another successful operation, during which the large landing ship Tsezar Kunikov of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was destroyed.
A few days earlier, it was reported that French President Emmanuel Macron had postponed his visit to Ukraine scheduled for February 13-14 “for security reasons.” At the same time, no specific details were disclosed as to why the planned trip did not take place. However, this did not prevent Russian public and official media from coming up with their own version of events and, as expected, discrediting Ukraine.
StopFake continues to refute similar fakes in its pieces: Fake: Ukraine Called Norway Kyiv’s Debtor and Demanded Money, Fake: Foundation Belonging to Zelenskyi’s Wife Scammed the United Arab Emirates Government, Fake: Ukraine’s Embassy in Germany Collects Data on Men Who Go to Protests There.
