Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet on the tarmac at Elmendorf-Richardson Air Base in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP
“This will be a corruption scandal that will change the course of history,” claimed shadowy online accounts on January 20. According to them, senior Ukrainian and French officials, as well as military officers, had diverted €2 billion intended for the purchase of 100 Rafale fighter jets. The alleged scandal was supposedly uncovered by an investigation from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
As AFP Factuel, France 24 and TF1’s verification unit demonstrated, this investigation never existed, and the fabricated tale is only the latest attempt by pro-Russian networks to spread disinformation in France.
According to information obtained by Le Monde, the campaign is believed to have originated from “Storm-1516,” the nickname for a Russian propaganda group that has been highly active in France since 2025, seeking to discredit Ukraine among the French public through fake news sites.
Nevertheless, this rumor went largely unnoticed. The reason: In January, France was preoccupied with multiple fabrications coming from Donald Trump.
Uptick in operations targeting France
Since the beginning of the year, French diplomats have had to counter several false narratives originating from the United States. One claimed that President Emmanuel Macron was responsible for rising drug prices (in reality, prices are set by a committee at the Ministry of Health); another asserted that only the United Kingdom fought alongside the Americans in Afghanistan (88 French soldiers lost their lives there).
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