Incident I00216: Rats, bedbugs, tuberculosis, and financial problems. Russian propaganda disinformation about the Paris Olympics

Summary: [Translated from original in Russian] Since late March 2024, dozens of fake news stories related to the Olympic Games, which will be held in the French capital this summer, have appeared on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. This has created a veritable alternative reality, in which France is overrun with bedbugs and rats, Ukrainian soldiers and refugees have brought tuberculosis to the country, spectators are canceling hotel reservations, and there's no one to fill the stands. By the end of April, the flow of such publications abruptly ceased. "Verified" attempted to understand how this wave of fakes emerged and disappeared.
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Reference	Pub Date	Authors	Org	Archive
https://provereno.media/blog/2024/05/11/krysy-klopy-tuberkulyoz-i-finansovye-problemy-feyki-rossyskoy-propagandy-ob-olimpiade-v-parizhe/	2024-05-11 00:00:00	Евгений Бунтман , С. Т.	Популярные статьи	https://archive.is/b5pNT

Technique	Description given for this incident
T0068 Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis	[Translated from original in Russian] Russian propaganda began actively attacking France and its President Emmanuel Macron in connection with a different news story. On February 27, Macron stated that he wouldn't rule out sending French troops to Ukraine, and subsequently reiterated his stand. Soon after, in Telegram channels that regularly publish disinformation, the French president temporarily eclipsed his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy: it was Macron, for example, who was the subject of the majority of fake magazine covers in the first months of 2024 (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). By the end of March, the fakers' attention had shifted to a project of great importance to Macron and his government: the Paris Olympics. Bedbugs and rats In the second half of 2023, the internet was flooded with reports of bedbugs in France. They were found everywhere: in apartments, hospitals, schools, and public transportation. But only some of the reports were true. The problem does exist: for example, BBC Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield cited experts in one of his reports who said it occurs at the end of every summer. But the reports about the bedbug infestation, which allegedly led to the possible cancellation of the Games and the widespread closure of hospitals, turned out to be false (T0160.002: Information is False). They were created by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. A striking example of this mixture of truth and lies is the news about a bedbug-infested hospital in the northern French city of Arras. On April 9, 2024, the newspaper La Voix du Nord reported that the patient found with bedbugs had been isolated, while the other patients were transferred to nearby healthcare facilities. Major French media outlets, including Le Figaro , later reported on this story . On April 11, the Telegram channel " Shkvarka 2.0 " expanded on this story, claiming that 11 hospitals and 24 emergency rooms had allegedly closed in France in recent weeks for similar reasons. The post was accompanied by a video featuring the Le Figaro logo, emphasizing that this all happened approximately 100 days before the Olympic opening ceremony (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). The French outlet did release a video about the events in Arras on April 9, but it made no mention of hospitals being closed nationwide. The fake copy included fragments containing false information, and one frame immediately featured captions in English. To illustrate the fake, the creators used a stock photo from the internet. The Alamy photo agency website states that it is of an emergency room in London. The day after the video with the fake fragments was published, a report appeared on the PoliTube_news Telegram channel claiming that French intelligence services had allegedly initiated an investigation into the journalists who reported on the closure of the Arras hospital. The post was also accompanied by a video, this time featuring the BFMTV logo. The video claimed that the French Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) was investigating reporters from BFMTV, La Voix du Nord, and France 3. Le Point contacted all the journalists mentioned in the article, who said they were hearing about it for the first time and laughed at the news. Editorial management took the fake news more seriously: BFMTV CEO Marc-Olivier Faugiel promised to sue for illegal use of the company's logo and announced that La Voix du Nord would join the lawsuit (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona, T0160.002: Information is False). The video's fake nature is evidenced not only by the journalists' statements but also by technical details. BFMTV's short videos on social media are designed completely differently, from the font to the color of the captions. The creators of the fake video chose a font similar to the one the publication uses in its video previews, but the text in the BFMTV videos themselves is formatted differently. The creators of Olympic fakes haven't forgotten another favorite tactic: fake graffiti (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Over the past two years, "Verified" has debunked nearly two dozen fake street art posts, all created using the same principle: digitally overlaying a drawing onto a real photo. For example, on March 29, the Telegram channel " Shkvarka 2.0 " published a photo of a mural depicting the "symbol of the Paris Olympics"—a bug twirling gymnastics hoops in the colors of the Olympic rings. A week and a half later, on April 9, the channel " V Ruka Kremlya Z " showed a new mural on the wall of another building, a photo allegedly sent by a subscriber. "What are the Paris Olympics based on? Three sewer rats and a giant bug. This is the attitude of the French towards the upcoming Olympics depicted on a huge mural in Paris," the post read. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find the exact locations of the murals based on the images (the photographers took pains to avoid including any identifying marks), but there's no doubt that street art like this has never existed on the streets of the French capital (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Firstly, the images were posted by channels that have been repeatedly caught spreading fakes. Secondly, there are no photos of these murals from other angles online. And finally, no French media outlets covered them. However, these fakes didn't garner much interest from Russian-speaking Telegram users either: according to "Verified" estimates based on TGStat data, both stories received a combined total of approximately 150,000 views. From late March to early April, pro-Kremlin channels generated numerous such stories. For example, a video about elevated levels of a pesticide used to kill rats and bedbugs in Parisian tap water was allegedly released by Le Figaro (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona), citing Professor Yves Lévy (the professor is real, but the citation is not available in open sources (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution)). Or the story about the bedbug-infested Olympic Village—this time, the post was accompanied by a fragment of an unrelated Euronews broadcast, with a feed from the AFP agency (the agency that allegedly broke the news) shown on the right side of the screen (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona, T0084.002: Plagiarise Content). In one of the stories, the authors of the fake attempted to combine several themes: bedbugs, rats, political scandal, and the general negative attitude toward the Olympics. It was first published on April 18 by the Telegram channel " Primorsky zov ." It claimed that former French Economy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo compared the Paris Olympics to "a gypsy camp that comes to the city, provides a momentary joy, and leaves behind financial losses, dirt, disease, and rats." A video featuring the TF1 logo claimed that the former minister's remark sparked a scandal: Norman Rudevich, head of the International Roma Union, allegedly condemned Borloo for discrimination. This fake is a mixed bag. Firstly, it's unlikely that a French television channel would have presented Borloo as a former Minister of the Economy – he held that post for exactly a month in 2007, but spent three years as Minister of Ecology, Energy, and Sustainable Development. Secondly, he never uttered such a phrase (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). In February 2023, Senator Hervé Marcel, head of Borloo's Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) party, did indeed refer to a "gypsy camp ," but this inappropriate comparison was made to the left-wing France Insoumise party's behavior in the National Assembly during the debate on pension reform, not to the upcoming Olympics. Marcel later apologized , but Borloo had nothing to do with this story. Finally, the video itself is fake. TF1 has never produced a video like this (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona), and the footage of Borloo is excerpts from his interview with France Inter radio on June 22, 2023 (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content), in which he didn't mention the Olympics, gypsies, rats, or bedbugs. Pollution of the Seine The Seine plays a key role in the symbolism of the 2024 Olympics. The opening ceremony, scheduled for July 26, will take place on the river. The delegations of the participating teams will be carried on 160 boats past all the main Parisian landmarks: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre. However, the Seine has never been known for its cleanliness, and the French authorities are doing everything possible to improve this. Macron has repeatedly promised to swim in the Seine himself before the Olympics to prove the safety of the water in Paris's main river—and he's not alone. Mayor Anne Hidalgo and IOC President Thomas Bach have also made similar statements. In March and April, fakers began to exploit the Seine's pollution theme (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). On April 16, the Telegram channel " Z_O_V " reported that ironic graffiti had appeared on the Seine embankment: it depicted the three-eyed fish Blinky (who lives in ponds near the nuclear power plant in The Simpsons) jumping out of the river and claiming the water in the Seine is absolutely clean. This story turned out to be one of the most viral of all Olympic fakes studied by "Verified," garnering over 250,000 views on Telegram (largely due to a post on the major channel " Two Majors "). We determined the exact location from which the photograph that served as the basis for the fake was taken: it is the Left Bank of the Seine, and the embankment where the graffiti is supposedly located is opposite, on the Île de la Cité, not far from Notre-Dame Cathedral. However, it is unlikely that Parisians saw this drawing, since not a single French media outlet reported on it, and local residents and numerous tourists did not post photos on social media (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels also exploited the Seine's polluted water theme using another of their traditional methods : a fake cover (T0161.001: Impersonated Content). The story about Macron's promise to swim in the river was depicted using a fake cover from the German satirical magazine Titanic. "I will prove that the water in the Seine is absolutely safe for the Olympic Games," Macron says in the cartoon, then dives in and emerges a mutant. The real April issue of Titanic has a completely different cover (with Hitler smoking marijuana)—the magazine typically covers German news, not events relevant to other countries. Furthermore, the authors never corrected the errors found on other fake covers of the publication: for example, the word "issue" (Ausgabe) is misspelled (Aufgabe). Ukrainians and tuberculosis Sanitary and epidemiological fakes about the Paris Olympics aren't limited to bedbugs, rats, and dirty water in the Seine. Another popular story concerns tuberculosis, which Ukrainians are bringing to France. One claim claims that 85% of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel who arrived in France for rehabilitation were diagnosed with the disease, and that the doctors treating them also became infected. A post that first appeared on the Shkvarka News channel on March 27 cited screenshots from videos featuring the logos of France 24 and RFI as evidence (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). Four days later, the same channel reported that French authorities would introduce mandatory tuberculosis testing for Ukrainian refugees, and on April 18, they updated the story, claiming that $2 billion had been allocated for testing, and that luggage would also be checked for parasites. In all three cases, the primary sources were the Telegram channels "Shkvarka News" and "Shkvarka 2.0," where posts appeared simultaneously. The last two publications about Ukrainian refugees included videos with the RFI logo as evidence (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). The latter is the most detailed and deserves a closer look. The video cites a document allegedly from the French Ministry of Labor and Health, which outlines stricter controls for Ukrainians arriving in the country. It concludes by stating that those who refuse to undergo testing for tuberculosis, hepatitis A, B, and C, HIV, and other diseases, including COVID-19, will be deported within 48 hours. The ministry's website doesn't list such an order in the official documents section , and no documents signed by the minister were issued on April 17 (the date indicated on the document in the video) (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Searching the website for the words "tuberculosis" and "Ukraine" reveals only a memo drafted in the spring of 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It states that the fight against tuberculosis in Ukraine is not as intensive as in France, so adults are advised to get tested. Testing is mandatory for children. However, no penalties are stipulated for refusal, and the document has not been updated since the summer of 2022. However, as in previous cases, the problem exists: in its March report, the French National Health Agency noted the rise in registered tuberculosis cases in the country and cited statistics showing that the incidence rate among Ukrainian refugees is 197 per 100,000 people (for comparison, in France as a whole, it is no more than 10 per 100,000 people) (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). Nevertheless, vaccination remains voluntary, the report emphasizes. Finally, the videos themselves have no connection to RFI or France 24. There are no videos about Ukrainians and tuberculosis on either RFI's website or its YouTube channel. Furthermore, on March 28, the company issued a special statement condemning the use of its logo to create a fake news story about allegedly infected Ukrainian soldiers. And fact-checkers at France 24 mentioned this series of fakes in one of their analyses. "The Games Will Be a Disaster": Sponsor Withdrawal and Spectator Problems The leitmotif of Olympic fakes is the impending failure of the Games. The stories described above described problems that would allegedly seriously complicate the competition. In the reality created by the fakers, this was confirmed by the decisions made by the competition sponsors and tourists planning to attend. On April 8, a post appeared on the Telegram channel "Mariupol Party Girl" claiming that three companies—Spotify, Lego, and Hochland—had disappeared from the sponsors section of the 2024 Olympics website. Attached to the post was a video featuring the TF1 logo , which supported the news with screenshots of the website and a commentary by economist Jacques Attali. These companies are indeed not listed in the "Partners" section of the official Olympics website , which is not surprising: none of them have publicly announced any such contracts with the IOC or the Paris Organizing Committee (T0160.002: Information is False). The Ukrainian fact-checking project " Gvara Media " received comments from official representatives of Spotify, Lego, and Hochland, who assured that they have never been partners of the Paris Olympics. Jacques Attali also responded to the inquiry, stating that he neither said nor thought the words attributed to him in the video (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Finally, the video is also not available on TF1 platforms (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels claim that not only sponsors but also spectators are abandoning the Olympics. On March 27, the aforementioned " Shkvarka 2.0 " channel posted a video featuring the France 24 logo, claiming that Airbnb would automatically make Olympic bookings in France non-refundable due to mass cancellations. In March alone, Airbnb users allegedly canceled over 23,000 bookings, costing the service over €600,000 in losses, the video claimed. Fact-checkers from France 24's Les Observateurs project verified that their own channel had not produced such a video (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona) and then contacted Airbnb and the expert mentioned in the video for comment. The short-term rental service stated that the cited figures were fictitious and that there were no mass cancellations during the Olympics (T0164.001: Narrative Presents Fabricated Statistics as Genuine Data, T0160.002: Information is False). Meanwhile, the British company Verdant Leisure stated that their tourism expert, Francesca Holdsworth, had not made any such comments to anyone (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Finally, a logical plotline in this alternative Olympic universe is the persecution of those who "tell the truth." At the very beginning, we reported on the fake investigation that French intelligence services allegedly launched into journalists who wrote about the closure of the Arras hospital. But such a story is not unique. On April 2, the same Shkvarka News reported on censorship imposed on French journalists—they were allegedly banned from reporting on issues related to the preparation and hosting of the Olympics. A video confirming this news features the BBC logo, and the investigative project Bellingcat is cited as the source. This scheme (a BBC video citing Bellingcat) has become as commonplace as fake magazine covers. At the end of 2023, "Verified" already wrote in detail about the flood of fakes under the British Broadcasting Corporation's brand. This video is no different (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). It consists of stock photos and videos, excerpts from speeches (in this case, TF1 journalist Samira El Ghadir and the channel's executive director, Rodolphe Bellmer) (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content), and screenshots of earlier Olympic fakes are shown as "true reports." Fact-checkers from " Gvara Media " received a comment from Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, who called the video a fake. Bellmer's speech about the alleged censorship introduced in 2024, used in the video, is his speech at the launch of one of TF1's projects in 2023 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current). An obvious continuation of the story about the French authorities "concealing the truth" is their crackdown on criticism, including visual criticism. On April 27, the latest fake we've discovered, related to street art and the Olympics, appeared. Simultaneously, the Telegram channels " Shkvarka News " and " Shkvarka 2.0 " reported that an unnamed Parisian municipality had destroyed a supposed €2 million Banksy work. "A drawing of an athlete throwing a rocket appeared in Paris. The word '2024' is written on the athlete's chest. Apparently a reference to the Olympics. But the French are so obsessed with threats surrounding the Olympics that they painted over the graffiti," the posts stated, which garnered only 7,500 views. The drawing is based on a real work by Banksy, which he created back in 2012 in the run-up to the London Olympics (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage, T0161.001: Impersonated Content). Since the photographs this time showed parts of other buildings, "Verified" was able to pinpoint the exact location . The photo, which was then overlaid with a reworked Banksy mural, was taken in a location already familiar to our regular readers—the commune of Montreuil, east of Paris. Specifically, it was taken on the wall of a building at 31 rue Voltaire. This is the eighth graffiti we've analyzed that was allegedly created in the same area (although it was once claimed to be from Brussels). To further enhance the credibility of the story, the fakers also fabricated screenshots of Instagram stories and website pages from the French newspapers Le Parisien and Le Monde, respectively. Neither the former nor the latter published such materials (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). [...] In this article, "Verified" covered only a portion of the fakes about the Paris Olympics created by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels from late March to late April. There are over three dozen of them—and these are just the ones we were able to find. They employed the full arsenal of tools actively used by fakers over the past two years: fake videos from European media outlets, magazine covers, and non-existent graffiti. Some fakes are multi-layered: one media outlet supposedly quotes another, which in turn cites the opinion of a real expert (who, of course, never actually said those words). Clearly, the production line for creating such fakes is well-established. However, there's a mystery. None of these fakes went truly viral, with only a few amassing hundreds of thousands of views combined: for example, the post about tuberculosis and Ukrainian refugees only had 130,000. The rest barely circulated online, including in French-language posts on X. The goal of these fakes is likely to gain critical mass and create the impression that the Paris Olympics are a surefire failure. Real problems (bedbugs and rats, pollution in the Seine, the cost of the Olympics) are greatly exaggerated in these publications and supplemented with false details.

Technique

Description given for this incident

T0068 Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis

[Translated from original in Russian] Russian propaganda began actively attacking France and its President Emmanuel Macron in connection with a different news story. On February 27, Macron stated that he wouldn't rule out sending French troops to Ukraine, and subsequently reiterated his stand. Soon after, in Telegram channels that regularly publish disinformation, the French president temporarily eclipsed his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy: it was Macron, for example, who was the subject of the majority of fake magazine covers in the first months of 2024 (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis).

By the end of March, the fakers' attention had shifted to a project of great importance to Macron and his government: the Paris Olympics.

Bedbugs and rats

In the second half of 2023, the internet was flooded with reports of bedbugs in France. They were found everywhere: in apartments, hospitals, schools, and public transportation. But only some of the reports were true. The problem does exist: for example, BBC Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield cited experts in one of his reports who said it occurs at the end of every summer. But the reports about the bedbug infestation, which allegedly led to the possible cancellation of the Games and the widespread closure of hospitals, turned out to be false (T0160.002: Information is False). They were created by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.

A striking example of this mixture of truth and lies is the news about a bedbug-infested hospital in the northern French city of Arras. On April 9, 2024, the newspaper La Voix du Nord reported that the patient found with bedbugs had been isolated, while the other patients were transferred to nearby healthcare facilities. Major French media outlets, including Le Figaro , later reported on this story . On April 11, the Telegram channel " Shkvarka 2.0 " expanded on this story, claiming that 11 hospitals and 24 emergency rooms had allegedly closed in France in recent weeks for similar reasons. The post was accompanied by a video featuring the Le Figaro logo, emphasizing that this all happened approximately 100 days before the Olympic opening ceremony (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona).

The French outlet did release a video about the events in Arras on April 9, but it made no mention of hospitals being closed nationwide. The fake copy included fragments containing false information, and one frame immediately featured captions in English.

To illustrate the fake, the creators used a stock photo from the internet. The Alamy photo agency website states that it is of an emergency room in London.

The day after the video with the fake fragments was published, a report appeared on the PoliTube_news Telegram channel claiming that French intelligence services had allegedly initiated an investigation into the journalists who reported on the closure of the Arras hospital. The post was also accompanied by a video, this time featuring the BFMTV logo.

The video claimed that the French Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) was investigating reporters from BFMTV, La Voix du Nord, and France 3. Le Point contacted all the journalists mentioned in the article, who said they were hearing about it for the first time and laughed at the news. Editorial management took the fake news more seriously: BFMTV CEO Marc-Olivier Faugiel promised to sue for illegal use of the company's logo and announced that La Voix du Nord would join the lawsuit (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona, T0160.002: Information is False).

The video's fake nature is evidenced not only by the journalists' statements but also by technical details. BFMTV's short videos on social media are designed completely differently, from the font to the color of the captions. The creators of the fake video chose a font similar to the one the publication uses in its video previews, but the text in the BFMTV videos themselves is formatted differently.

The creators of Olympic fakes haven't forgotten another favorite tactic: fake graffiti (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Over the past two years, "Verified" has debunked nearly two dozen fake street art posts, all created using the same principle: digitally overlaying a drawing onto a real photo.

For example, on March 29, the Telegram channel " Shkvarka 2.0 " published a photo of a mural depicting the "symbol of the Paris Olympics"—a bug twirling gymnastics hoops in the colors of the Olympic rings. A week and a half later, on April 9, the channel " V Ruka Kremlya Z " showed a new mural on the wall of another building, a photo allegedly sent by a subscriber. "What are the Paris Olympics based on? Three sewer rats and a giant bug. This is the attitude of the French towards the upcoming Olympics depicted on a huge mural in Paris," the post read.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to find the exact locations of the murals based on the images (the photographers took pains to avoid including any identifying marks), but there's no doubt that street art like this has never existed on the streets of the French capital (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Firstly, the images were posted by channels that have been repeatedly caught spreading fakes. Secondly, there are no photos of these murals from other angles online. And finally, no French media outlets covered them. However, these fakes didn't garner much interest from Russian-speaking Telegram users either: according to "Verified" estimates based on TGStat data, both stories received a combined total of approximately 150,000 views.

From late March to early April, pro-Kremlin channels generated numerous such stories. For example, a video about elevated levels of a pesticide used to kill rats and bedbugs in Parisian tap water was allegedly released by Le Figaro (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona), citing Professor Yves Lévy (the professor is real, but the citation is not available in open sources (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution)). Or the story about the bedbug-infested Olympic Village—this time, the post was accompanied by a fragment of an unrelated Euronews broadcast, with a feed from the AFP agency (the agency that allegedly broke the news) shown on the right side of the screen (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona, T0084.002: Plagiarise Content).

In one of the stories, the authors of the fake attempted to combine several themes: bedbugs, rats, political scandal, and the general negative attitude toward the Olympics. It was first published on April 18 by the Telegram channel " Primorsky zov ." It claimed that former French Economy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo compared the Paris Olympics to "a gypsy camp that comes to the city, provides a momentary joy, and leaves behind financial losses, dirt, disease, and rats." A video featuring the TF1 logo claimed that the former minister's remark sparked a scandal: Norman Rudevich, head of the International Roma Union, allegedly condemned Borloo for discrimination.

This fake is a mixed bag. Firstly, it's unlikely that a French television channel would have presented Borloo as a former Minister of the Economy – he held that post for exactly a month in 2007, but spent three years as Minister of Ecology, Energy, and Sustainable Development. Secondly, he never uttered such a phrase (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). In February 2023, Senator Hervé Marcel, head of Borloo's Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) party, did indeed refer to a "gypsy camp ," but this inappropriate comparison was made to the left-wing France Insoumise party's behavior in the National Assembly during the debate on pension reform, not to the upcoming Olympics. Marcel later apologized , but Borloo had nothing to do with this story. Finally, the video itself is fake. TF1 has never produced a video like this (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona), and the footage of Borloo is excerpts from his interview with France Inter radio on June 22, 2023 (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content), in which he didn't mention the Olympics, gypsies, rats, or bedbugs.

Pollution of the Seine

The Seine plays a key role in the symbolism of the 2024 Olympics. The opening ceremony, scheduled for July 26, will take place on the river. The delegations of the participating teams will be carried on 160 boats past all the main Parisian landmarks: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre. However, the Seine has never been known for its cleanliness, and the French authorities are doing everything possible to improve this. Macron has repeatedly promised to swim in the Seine himself before the Olympics to prove the safety of the water in Paris's main river—and he's not alone. Mayor Anne Hidalgo and IOC President Thomas Bach have also made similar statements.

In March and April, fakers began to exploit the Seine's pollution theme (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). On April 16, the Telegram channel " Z_O_V " reported that ironic graffiti had appeared on the Seine embankment: it depicted the three-eyed fish Blinky (who lives in ponds near the nuclear power plant in The Simpsons) jumping out of the river and claiming the water in the Seine is absolutely clean. This story turned out to be one of the most viral of all Olympic fakes studied by "Verified," garnering over 250,000 views on Telegram (largely due to a post on the major channel " Two Majors "). We determined the exact location from which the photograph that served as the basis for the fake was taken: it is the Left Bank of the Seine, and the embankment where the graffiti is supposedly located is opposite, on the Île de la Cité, not far from Notre-Dame Cathedral. However, it is unlikely that Parisians saw this drawing, since not a single French media outlet reported on it, and local residents and numerous tourists did not post photos on social media (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage).

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels also exploited the Seine's polluted water theme using another of their traditional methods : a fake cover (T0161.001: Impersonated Content). The story about Macron's promise to swim in the river was depicted using a fake cover from the German satirical magazine Titanic. "I will prove that the water in the Seine is absolutely safe for the Olympic Games," Macron says in the cartoon, then dives in and emerges a mutant.

The real April issue of Titanic has a completely different cover (with Hitler smoking marijuana)—the magazine typically covers German news, not events relevant to other countries. Furthermore, the authors never corrected the errors found on other fake covers of the publication: for example, the word "issue" (Ausgabe) is misspelled (Aufgabe).

Ukrainians and tuberculosis

Sanitary and epidemiological fakes about the Paris Olympics aren't limited to bedbugs, rats, and dirty water in the Seine. Another popular story concerns tuberculosis, which Ukrainians are bringing to France. One claim claims that 85% of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel who arrived in France for rehabilitation were diagnosed with the disease, and that the doctors treating them also became infected. A post that first appeared on the Shkvarka News channel on March 27 cited screenshots from videos featuring the logos of France 24 and RFI as evidence (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). Four days later, the same channel reported that French authorities would introduce mandatory tuberculosis testing for Ukrainian refugees, and on April 18, they updated the story, claiming that $2 billion had been allocated for testing, and that luggage would also be checked for parasites. In all three cases, the primary sources were the Telegram channels "Shkvarka News" and "Shkvarka 2.0," where posts appeared simultaneously. The last two publications about Ukrainian refugees included videos with the RFI logo as evidence (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). The latter is the most detailed and deserves a closer look.

The video cites a document allegedly from the French Ministry of Labor and Health, which outlines stricter controls for Ukrainians arriving in the country. It concludes by stating that those who refuse to undergo testing for tuberculosis, hepatitis A, B, and C, HIV, and other diseases, including COVID-19, will be deported within 48 hours.

The ministry's website doesn't list such an order in the official documents section , and no documents signed by the minister were issued on April 17 (the date indicated on the document in the video) (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Searching the website for the words "tuberculosis" and "Ukraine" reveals only a memo drafted in the spring of 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It states that the fight against tuberculosis in Ukraine is not as intensive as in France, so adults are advised to get tested. Testing is mandatory for children. However, no penalties are stipulated for refusal, and the document has not been updated since the summer of 2022.

However, as in previous cases, the problem exists: in its March report, the French National Health Agency noted the rise in registered tuberculosis cases in the country and cited statistics showing that the incidence rate among Ukrainian refugees is 197 per 100,000 people (for comparison, in France as a whole, it is no more than 10 per 100,000 people) (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). Nevertheless, vaccination remains voluntary, the report emphasizes.

Finally, the videos themselves have no connection to RFI or France 24. There are no videos about Ukrainians and tuberculosis on either RFI's website or its YouTube channel. Furthermore, on March 28, the company issued a special statement condemning the use of its logo to create a fake news story about allegedly infected Ukrainian soldiers. And fact-checkers at France 24 mentioned this series of fakes in one of their analyses.

"The Games Will Be a Disaster": Sponsor Withdrawal and Spectator Problems

The leitmotif of Olympic fakes is the impending failure of the Games. The stories described above described problems that would allegedly seriously complicate the competition. In the reality created by the fakers, this was confirmed by the decisions made by the competition sponsors and tourists planning to attend.

On April 8, a post appeared on the Telegram channel "Mariupol Party Girl" claiming that three companies—Spotify, Lego, and Hochland—had disappeared from the sponsors section of the 2024 Olympics website. Attached to the post was a video featuring the TF1 logo , which supported the news with screenshots of the website and a commentary by economist Jacques Attali.

These companies are indeed not listed in the "Partners" section of the official Olympics website , which is not surprising: none of them have publicly announced any such contracts with the IOC or the Paris Organizing Committee (T0160.002: Information is False). The Ukrainian fact-checking project " Gvara Media " received comments from official representatives of Spotify, Lego, and Hochland, who assured that they have never been partners of the Paris Olympics. Jacques Attali also responded to the inquiry, stating that he neither said nor thought the words attributed to him in the video (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Finally, the video is also not available on TF1 platforms (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona).

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels claim that not only sponsors but also spectators are abandoning the Olympics. On March 27, the aforementioned " Shkvarka 2.0 " channel posted a video featuring the France 24 logo, claiming that Airbnb would automatically make Olympic bookings in France non-refundable due to mass cancellations. In March alone, Airbnb users allegedly canceled over 23,000 bookings, costing the service over €600,000 in losses, the video claimed.

Fact-checkers from France 24's Les Observateurs project verified that their own channel had not produced such a video (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona) and then contacted Airbnb and the expert mentioned in the video for comment. The short-term rental service stated that the cited figures were fictitious and that there were no mass cancellations during the Olympics (T0164.001: Narrative Presents Fabricated Statistics as Genuine Data, T0160.002: Information is False). Meanwhile, the British company Verdant Leisure stated that their tourism expert, Francesca Holdsworth, had not made any such comments to anyone (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution).

Finally, a logical plotline in this alternative Olympic universe is the persecution of those who "tell the truth." At the very beginning, we reported on the fake investigation that French intelligence services allegedly launched into journalists who wrote about the closure of the Arras hospital. But such a story is not unique.

On April 2, the same Shkvarka News reported on censorship imposed on French journalists—they were allegedly banned from reporting on issues related to the preparation and hosting of the Olympics. A video confirming this news features the BBC logo, and the investigative project Bellingcat is cited as the source.

This scheme (a BBC video citing Bellingcat) has become as commonplace as fake magazine covers. At the end of 2023, "Verified" already wrote in detail about the flood of fakes under the British Broadcasting Corporation's brand. This video is no different (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). It consists of stock photos and videos, excerpts from speeches (in this case, TF1 journalist Samira El Ghadir and the channel's executive director, Rodolphe Bellmer) (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content), and screenshots of earlier Olympic fakes are shown as "true reports." Fact-checkers from " Gvara Media " received a comment from Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, who called the video a fake. Bellmer's speech about the alleged censorship introduced in 2024, used in the video, is his speech at the launch of one of TF1's projects in 2023 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current).

An obvious continuation of the story about the French authorities "concealing the truth" is their crackdown on criticism, including visual criticism. On April 27, the latest fake we've discovered, related to street art and the Olympics, appeared. Simultaneously, the Telegram channels " Shkvarka News " and " Shkvarka 2.0 " reported that an unnamed Parisian municipality had destroyed a supposed €2 million Banksy work. "A drawing of an athlete throwing a rocket appeared in Paris. The word '2024' is written on the athlete's chest. Apparently a reference to the Olympics. But the French are so obsessed with threats surrounding the Olympics that they painted over the graffiti," the posts stated, which garnered only 7,500 views.

The drawing is based on a real work by Banksy, which he created back in 2012 in the run-up to the London Olympics (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage, T0161.001: Impersonated Content).

Since the photographs this time showed parts of other buildings, "Verified" was able to pinpoint the exact location . The photo, which was then overlaid with a reworked Banksy mural, was taken in a location already familiar to our regular readers—the commune of Montreuil, east of Paris. Specifically, it was taken on the wall of a building at 31 rue Voltaire. This is the eighth graffiti we've analyzed that was allegedly created in the same area (although it was once claimed to be from Brussels).

To further enhance the credibility of the story, the fakers also fabricated screenshots of Instagram stories and website pages from the French newspapers Le Parisien and Le Monde, respectively. Neither the former nor the latter published such materials (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona).

[...]

In this article, "Verified" covered only a portion of the fakes about the Paris Olympics created by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels from late March to late April. There are over three dozen of them—and these are just the ones we were able to find. They employed the full arsenal of tools actively used by fakers over the past two years: fake videos from European media outlets, magazine covers, and non-existent graffiti. Some fakes are multi-layered: one media outlet supposedly quotes another, which in turn cites the opinion of a real expert (who, of course, never actually said those words). Clearly, the production line for creating such fakes is well-established.

However, there's a mystery. None of these fakes went truly viral, with only a few amassing hundreds of thousands of views combined: for example, the post about tuberculosis and Ukrainian refugees only had 130,000. The rest barely circulated online, including in French-language posts on X.

The goal of these fakes is likely to gain critical mass and create the impression that the Paris Olympics are a surefire failure. Real problems (bedbugs and rats, pollution in the Seine, the cost of the Olympics) are greatly exaggerated in these publications and supplemented with false details.

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Incident I00216: Rats, bedbugs, tuberculosis, and financial problems. Russian propaganda disinformation about the Paris Olympics