A week after Moscow announced a strike on a building in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, where Russia alleged "French mercenaries" had been deployed, France's services in charge of information warfare – which report to both the foreign ministry and the military – say they have gathered evidence that this was a Russian disinformation operation.
Russia tried once again to boost its media offensive by organizing a vote on a resolution, in the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, on Wednesday, January 24, denouncing the alleged presence of these "mercenaries." However, that same day, several media outlets received information suggesting that this was an act of manipulation.
First, the announcement of the strike on Kharkiv came the day after Emmanuel Macron's January 16 announcement that he was sending Kyiv 40 long-range SCALP-EG missiles. According to Moscow, the strike on Kharkiv took place within hours of the French president's statement. This timing has raised questions, as retaliatory strikes are rarely improvised so quickly.
The first news of this strike, which allegedly killed 60 fighters and wounded around 20 others, was also reported – ahead of even the Russian authorities – on a French-language website called Observateur Continental, which has long been identified as a conduit for Moscow's disinformation operations. A site "directly piloted by the GRU [Russian military intelligence]," a source close to the case said on Wednesday.
A 'maneuver'
To lend credibility to the story and break the barrier between the real world and the world of online media, the French ambassador in Moscow was subsequently invited to go to the Russian foreign ministry. On January 19, two days after the alleged strike, this invitation turned into a "summons" aimed at denouncing "Paris's growing involvement in the conflict over Ukraine."
This "maneuver" – a pre-planned one, as Russian operations always are, according to the same source – continued with SOS Donbass, a French pro-Russian organization, disseminating two lists of foreign fighters in Ukraine alleged to have been killed in the strike. Most of these lists originated from hacking operations against the Ukrainian administration, and have been in circulation for several months – November 2022 for one, November 2023 for the other – on Russian Telegram channels.
These lists contain real names. The French armed forces have identified at least one active serviceman – a reservist under contract until 2025 – 12 former soldiers, and three candidates for enlistment. Some other identities, however, are false. A security source added that "for the moment, there is no proof of the death of a single French person" in the alleged Kharkiv strike.
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