Paris has detected “a coordinated maneuver by Russia” aimed at spreading false information implicating France, such as the alleged presence of French “mercenaries” fighting alongside Ukraine, the French defense ministry said today.

“Competent government agencies have detected and are monitoring Russia’s coordinated maneuvering – including through pro-Russian news networks and state media such as Sputnik News, RT and RIA Novosti – aimed at transmitting and spreading this false information,” he pointed out. the French ministry in its announcement.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, France has been “the target of a Russian disinformation campaign”, which “intensified” in mid-January after French President Emmanuel Macron “reaffirmed French support for Ukraine”, the ministry added.

“We cannot let Russia win,” Macron had emphasized at the time announcing new arms deliveries to Kiev.

A day after his statements, on January 17, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had hit a building in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, which was being used as a “temporary deployment site for mercenaries, the majority of whom were French citizens.” Sixty militants were “neutralized” and 20 were wounded, Moscow said at the time.

The “Russian disinformation maneuver” continued on Monday with the publication of “lists of alleged French mercenaries killed in this attack via Russian Telegram accounts”, knowing that “some of these lists were already published in 2022, in the first weeks of the conflict” , the French Ministry of Defense explained.

On Wednesday, “the campaign” continued with Sputnik broadcasting the news of the destruction of a Franco-Italian surface-to-air system SAMP-T, which had been delivered to Ukraine, the ministry noted.

But “France has not confirmed any of this information”, the same source underlined.

“In the face of the intensification of French military aid to Ukraine we expect this Russian poisoning maneuver to continue: we condemn it and strengthen our capabilities to monitor these fakes,” French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecorny warned.

“France does not have ‘mercenaries’ either in Ukraine or elsewhere, unlike other countries,” the French Foreign Ministry has already stressed, denouncing a “new Russian, gross lie.”