Russia ‘pounding’ France with disinformation, says minister

France is being “pounded” by Russian disinformation that could distort the result of the EU elections in June, France’s minister for Europe has said.

Jean-Noël Barrot said in an interview with Ouest-France that Russian propaganda was being disseminated across social media platforms on a weekly basis. “We are being pounded by the propaganda of Vladimir

Putin’s Russia and its communication corridors,” he said. “Not a week goes by without France being the target of coordinated and deliberate manoeuvres to disrupt public debate and interfere in the campaign for the European elections.”

He cited several examples, including the launch of a fake ministry of defence website claiming 200,000 French citizens were being called up to fight in Ukraine. A link to the site was posted on X at the end of March.

The French defence ministry said

at the time: “The site is a fake government site and has been reposted by malevolent accounts as part of a disinformation campaign.”

These sites, identified as one of several forms of Russian disinformation, look identical to bona fide and authoritative sources such as official government or mainstream media sites. Other disinformation Barrot cited included a recent announcement from a fake ministry of interior site claiming France was tightening conditions of entry for Ukrainians. In reality, people from Ukraine are allowed to live and work in the EU under a bloc-wide temporary protection directive.

Barrot said the risk to the EU elections on 6-9 June “is proven”.

Belgium, which holds the sixmonth rotating presidency of the EU, said it was looking at activating a temporary crisis taskforce to monitor and coordinate the response to Russian disinformation campaigns.

The EU’s Integrated Political Crisis Response unit was last used at the start of the war in Ukraine and during the Covid pandemic. Sources in Belgium said it would be in operation for two months.

Two weeks ago, the Belgian prime minister, Alexander De Croo, revealed the federal prosecutor’s office had opened an official investigation into alleged payments by the Kremlin to MEPs after it received classified intelligence from the country’s security services.

He said the mission to “help elect more pro-Russian candidates in the European parliament and to reinforce a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution” was “very clear”.

The Czech government recently discovered an alleged Russian disinformation operation aimed at influencing the EU elections.

The bloc regularly warns about the rise in disinformation, some of it targeting the election but in other instances sowing the seed that civil society is crumbling and amplifying dissent on issues such as Ukraine, migration and LGBTQ+ rights.

The EU’s anti-disinformation unit said it had identified 17,000 specific cases of false information on social media and fake sites.