On February 8-11, Facebook user Abuladze Paata and Russian-language Telegram channels (1;2) published a video, alleging that a statement by the Ukrainian Embassy had angered French farmers. The video, which features the Euronews logo, shows a document purportedly demonstrating that the Embassy of Ukraine called on the farmers to end their protest and unite, as Ukrainian people, for the good of their homeland. According to the video, the leader of the farmers’ union reacted to the statement by saying that Ukraine has no right to demand anything from France and should keep its opinion to itself. The authors claim that the angry farmers threw manure at the Ukrainian Embassy.
The video fabrication is distributed using the Euronews logo. In fact, the media outlet has never published such content. The farmers did not throw manure at the Ukrainian Embassy. The comment by the leader of the farmers’ union as well as the document with the Embassy’s statement were fabricated.
Another video with the Euronews logo was distributed. The media outlet did not publish such material on any of its platforms (1;2;3;4).
The information that farmers threw manure at the Ukrainian Embassy in France is not confirmed either; such an event was not reported by local media, such as France 24, Le Monde, or others. The footage used at the beginning of the video does show the farmers’ protest, but it was not filmed in front of the Embassy of Ukraine. The authors of the video claim that the Ukrainian Embassy’s statement is dated February 7, and therefore, the farmers should have protested in the following days; however, the video used has been circulating on social networks since December 2023 (1;2).
The video does not actually show the Ukrainian Embassy, but the regional council building in the city of Dijon. Google Maps shows that this building is identical to the building shown in the video and that the EU, French, and Ukrainian flags are raised at its entrance.
In addition, the Embassy of Ukraine is located in Paris, not Dijon. The embassy building is visually different from the regional council building shown in the video.
As for the February 7 statement by the Ukrainian Embassy, it cannot be found in open sources, nor was it published on the official webpage of the Ukrainian Embassy (1;2;3).
The fact-checking organization Open also checked the fabricated video released with the Euronews logo. The organization compared the signature on the fabricated document, attributed to the current Ukrainian ambassador, Vadym Omelchenko, with his real signature. It turned out that, among other inaccuracies, the signature shown in the video did not match the ambassador’s real signature.
The video also falsified a comment by Arnaud Rousseau, the leader of France’s largest farmers’ union. The shots against which the falsified text of Rousseau’s statement shows up on the screen were cut out of an interview published on February 2.
Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, fabricated videos, attributed to various respected media outlets, including Euronews, have appeared time and again; they mostly concern events in Ukraine and the West and aim at discrediting Ukraine and the EU countries. In the past, Myth Detector has checked videos falsely attributed to Euronews (1;2;3).
Video fabrications falsely attributed to reputable media outlets share common features: to spread disinformation, the authors of such videos use logos of reliable media outlets and make their videos look like the reports of those media; the primary sources of information are sometimes impossible to identify, and the videos are distributed mainly by Russian media and Telegram channels; the videos use general shots cut from different videos; the videos often have music and captions overlaid on them, although it should be noted that similar content produced by Euronews does not have music overlaid on it, but a voice-over reading the captions.
Read about who and how fabricates videos, falsely attributing them to respected media outlets, in Myth Detector’s article:
About the source
Facebook user Abuladze Paata regularly disseminates anti-Ukrainian, anti-Western, and homophobic content. In the past, Myth Detector has checked for false information spread by this user.
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