Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 26/10/2022
Fakenews is spreading on social networks that the French ambassador to Ukraine, Etienne de Poncins, has resigned and left this country.
On October 19, 2022, a screenshot of a post by a Facebook user under the name RT Afrique was published on the Telegram channel Code 17. The post, which is in French, states that “the French ambassador to Ukraine has resigned”:
The French ambassador to Ukraine resigned
The French ambassador to Ukraine, Mr Étienne de Poncins, has just resigned. Indeed, after the flood of Russian fire that fell on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, the French ambassador resigned and left Kyiv yesterday, as he said, to save his life.
Before leaving Kyiv, Étienne de Poncins said: “We no longer know what we are defending here, even Volodymyr Zelensky is no longer here in Kyiv, why continue to sacrifice people?
The screenshot was published with a description that repeated the claim from the photo that the ambassador allegedly said that “Zelensky is not in Kyiv”:
The French ambassador to Ukraine – “I no longer know who and what we support here. Zelensky is not in Kyiv… we don’t know where he is”.
We found identical posts of this screenshot on several Twitter (link, link, link, link) and Facebook accounts (link, link).
The claim that the French ambassador to Ukraine has resigned was shared along with a slightly different, but essentially the same version of his alleged statement about Zelensky (link, link, link).
Where did the “news” about the resignation of the French ambassador to Ukraine come from?
As seen in the published screenshot, information about the resignation and a quote attributed to the French ambassador were posted on RT Afrique’s Facebook page. We found two pages under this name, but the alleged news was published only on one.
In the description of this page, which uses a visual identity similar to the Russian media Russia Today (RT), it is stated, however, that it is a personal blog. It was created in April this year and has 39,000 followers.
RT France confirmed to AFP Factuel and Reuters that the Facebook page on which the information about the alleged resignation was published is not connected to the Russian media RT. They also stated the same for another site with the same name, which also presents itself as RT Afrique.
“RT France, which has a verified account on Facebook (www.facebook.com/RTFrance/), told Reuters in an email on October 24 that neither the Facebook page called RT Afrique “is affiliated with RT in any way” and that RT “never shared this false information”. (Reuters)
These sites did not respond to Reuters’ inquiry about whether they are the official sites of the Russian media.
We remind you that as of March 2, 2022, RT and Sputnik are prohibited from broadcasting in the EU.
The allegations were denied by Ambassador Etienne de Poncins and the Embassy of France in Ukraine
Claims that the French ambassador to Ukraine had resigned were spread first in French and then in other languages, as reported by AFP Factual, Reuters, Lead Stories and AP.
One of the tweets containing these claims was answered by Poncins himself, who denied these allegations.
The French politician Jean-Michela Cadenas announced on his Twitter account that the ambassador of France to Ukraine has resigned and shared the alleged quote in which he says that even Volodymyr Zelensky is no longer in Kyiv. Poncins responded to the tweet stating that it was fake news.
This is fake news, please remove it immediately
Jean-Michel Cadenas’ tweet is no longer available.
The French Embassy in Ukraine confirmed in a statement to the Associated Press that the ambassador is still on duty.
“The Ambassador of France to Ukraine, Etienne de Poncins, and the entire team of the Embassy of France in Kyiv continue their work in Ukraine, providing support in this very difficult period for the country”, reveals the embassy’s announcement.
The false quote from the French ambassador that Zelensky is no longer in Kyiv is only part of the claims in this narrative that has been running since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and seeks to discredit the Ukrainian president. Raskrinkavanje has written about similar disinformation attempts to prove the same narrative on several occasions (link, link).
Following the above, the claim that the French ambassador resigned and that he said that Zelensky is not in Kyiv, published for the first time in the local language on Telegram channel Code 17, we assess as fake news. Other publications of the same claims are assessed as the distribution of fake news.