Distorted accounts of the special military operation in Ukraine in the French media
The French media environment continues to be dominated by the picture of a parallel reality of Russia and its special military operation that is woven out of fake news and distorted facts. The Western propagandists are doing their best to glorify the Ukrainian military and to discredit Russia’s political and military leadership. The pride of place belongs to false news about the Russian armed forces and “filtration camps.” Here are several typical examples.
1. A pseudo-documentary about the Azovstal plant, aired by the 24-hour news and weather channel BFMTV. The neo-Nazi fighters and foreign mercenaries, who held civilian hostages at the plant, are shown, in the best Hollywood manner, as “noble heroes, real patriots and the only hope of survival for the hundreds of civilians they were taking care of.”
The film’s crew disregarded the official statements by the Russian Defence Ministry that it was the Kiev regime that prevented the civilians’ attempts to get out of the plant and that the Nazi “heroes” at Azovstal used civilians as live shields. Moreover, they promoted the idea that the Azov Battalion has no connection to the neo-Nazi ideology and only fed on “ultranationalist ideas” in the early days. The French journalists’ film is based on cynicism, barefaced lies and complete disregard for the tragic history of their own country. They were not confused by the fact that the chevrons of the Azov Battalion are a carbon copy of the emblem of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, which exterminated civilians in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944. The propagandists preferred to turn a blind eye to the Azov fighters’ neo-Nazi affinities, methods of operation, symbols, attributes and literature, which the Russian military have found in Azovstal’s catacombs and later showed to foreign journalists.
At the end of the film, the commentator describes the Azov fighters who have surrendered as saintlike “martyrs” headed for the Russian “filtration camps,” who may be sent to prisons or even executed.
2. Regular fake news about the situation in the Russian army. On July 25, 2022, Le Monde published an article about the use of “a complex strategy of low-key recruitment” allegedly used in Russia to replace the “boots on the ground.” Emmanuel Grynszpan and Elise Vincent are playing on the fantasies promoted by many French media outlets, which are based on unsubstantiated claims posted by questionable Russian-language online news outlets. Similarly questionable items have been posted by other French publications and TV5Monde.
3. Lies about “Russian filtration camps” in Ukraine. On July 15, 2022, the French free-to-air news channel LCI streamed a discussion by select “experts.” The most absurd statements were made by Russophobic historian Galia Ackerman, who claimed that filtration camps are “Russia’s favourite method, which it used back during WWII.” If this pseudo-historian had lived in that period, she would have received a pat on the back for her lies from Vichy France, which collaborated with Nazi Germany. The subject was taken up by the newspaper Le Parisien, which posted an item on July 15 that quoted the head of the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the OSCE. At the same time, the “unbiased” French newspaper refused to take note of the statements by Russian representative at the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich, who used hard facts to lay bare the Western disinformation campaign against Russia.
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