Pro-Russian resources are distributing a “video report” allegedly from the Euronews  channel that French President Emmanuel Macron is being threatened to force an escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Citing Bellingcat journalists, the authors report that Macron is being “blackmailed with an intimate video”.

However, this is actually fake. Neither Euronews nor Bellingcat published such a video report. This was reported by specialists from the VoxCheck project. There is no news on the Euronews and Bellingcat websites about how the French President is being blackmailed.

In the Euronews “report” all the footage is taken from open sources. So, if you check the first frames from the video in a reverse search, it turns out that they were taken on March 15, 2024 during the meeting of the leaders of France, Germany and Poland - Macron, Scholz and Tusk - in Berlin.

Another shot of Macron was taken from his 60 minutes interview in 2022.

In addition, the fake report also quotes French political scientist Olivier Paquet as allegedly confirming that American intelligence regularly uses blackmail against other politicians. However, the political scientist did not make such a statement - at least, it is not in open sources.

Bellingcat previously denied that its investigators were mentioned in another fake video that was passed off as a BBC report. Using the logos of the world's leading media (Euronews, Politico, Reuters), such fakes about Ukraine or the West are regularly created. By distributing this particular fake video, Russian propaganda is trying to minimize international support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. Previously, we refuted information that Euronews allegedly showed a story that the statement of the Ukrainian Embassy in France angered French farmers.