STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Did the European public broadcaster Euronews publish or air a report about French farmers attacking the Ukrainian embassy in Paris in early February 2024? No, that's not true: The video with the TV channel's logo couldn't be found on the Euronews website. The footage in question was originally recorded in a different French city. It predated the alleged date of the event and showed a "letter" with a fake signature of the Ukrainian ambassador to France.
The story appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, and was published on February 11, 2024. It began:
French farmers trashed the Ukrainian Embassy after it accused them of turning against the French Government and the people of Ukraine.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
The video had a visible Euronews logo in the upper right corner. It opened with a shot capturing some semisolid brown substance being dispersed in the direction of an official-looking building.
Between February 8, 2024, and this writing, it massively spread on X paired with textual variations of the claim in captions:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 18:19:13 2024 UTC; X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 18:19:56 2024 UTC; X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 18:20:37 2024 UTC; X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 18:21:45 2024 UTC; X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 18:25:16 2024 UTC; composite image by Lead Stories)
Contrary to the claim, however, the footage was not recent -- it had been online at least since December 22, 2023 (archived here.)
Lead Stories searched news reports mentioning the Ukrainian Embassy for the period between December 1, 2023, and February 12, 2024, on the Euronews France website but only found a single unrelated story (archived here):
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 19:37:23 2024 UTC; page was automatically translated to English by Chrome)
No reports about it were found on Google News (archived here.)
The appearance of the building in the video was inconsistent with what the Ukrainian Embassy in Paris (archived here) looks like:
(Sources: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:13:04 2024 UTC; Google screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:08:13 2024 UTC; composite image by Lead Stories)
Earlier posts placed the filmed event in Dijon, not Paris, as indicated by a geotag in one of the keyframes below (click to view larger):
(Source: Invid screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 18:32:54 2024 UTC)
Using reverse image search tools, Lead Stories found an exact match in Dijon. It was a building of a regional council (archived here) whose entrance had identical features: the same flags, the same stairs, and even similar posters on the adjacent part of the facade:
(Sources: Google Maps screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:26:52 2024 UTC; Google Maps screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:26:00 2024 UTC; composite image by Lead Stories)
The video that is the focus of this fact check also included an official-looking printout that was claimed to be a document signed by Ukraine's Ambassador to France:
(Sources: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:42:53 2024 UTC; X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:43:38 2024 UTC; X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:44:24 2024 UTC; composite image by Lead Stories)
As translated by Google Lens (archived here), one of the pages said: "It is with great concern and regret that we see the French, the successors of the great freedom fighters, trading off the well-being of their homeland, France, in an attempt to obtain minor economic advantages."
However, what was described as an "official letter from the diplomatic mission" was nowhere to be found in the announcements section (archived here) on the website of the Ukrainian Embassy.
Furthermore, the bottom of the third page of the letter showed a date: February 7, 2024. And that was inconsistent with the date of the footage.
Finally, the signature on the "letter" did not match the signature of the Ukrainian Ambassador found on a French government website (archived here):
(Source: Neuillysurseine.fr screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 21:24:24 2024 UTC)
On February 13, 2024, the Embassy of Ukraine in France told Lead Stories via email:
We confirm that the mentioned video is fake. The letter mentioned in the video is also fabricated. It was never prepared or sent by the Embassy of Ukraine in France.
Lead Stories reached out to Euronews France for additional commentaries. When we receive their responses, this article will be updated as appropriate.
It is not the first time that false claims about Ukraine and Ukrainians were purposefully attributed to credible media organizations that did not report what was falsely attributed to them. Previously, Lead Stories wrote that the BBC did not publish a video about a purported Belligcat report accusing Kyiv of selling weapons to Hamas. On a different occasion, a made-up news story was falsely attributed to Al Jazeera.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the stories involving Ukraine circulating on the internet since Russia's invasion can be found here.
Updates:
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2024-02-13T21:37:07Z 2024-02-13T21:37:07Z Adds statement from Embassy of Ukraine in France confirming claim is false.
