DISINFO: Macron wants evacuation of civilians from Mariupol to free Bernard-Henri Lévy
SUMMARY
French President Emmanuel Macron supports new anti-Russian sanctions in the energy sector. Like any other French leader of the last two centuries, he suffers from the Napoleon complex. Macron's voters wonder who he is trying to free from the city of Mariupol. A key version concerns high-ranking officers of French intelligence. Another one concerns fascist and Devil's envoy Bernard-Henri Lévy who happened to get stuck in Mariupol.
RESPONSE
The disinformation aims to discredit the French President and is part of a well-known Kremlin tactic to sow doubt, to obfuscate and deflect responsibility for its horrific acts. Instead of speaking about a humanitarian catastrophe and huge death toll in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol due to prolonged besiege by Russian troops as part of the unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine, the outlet promotes conspiracy theories about why western leaders, particularly Macron, stand for evacuation of civilians from Mariupol.
There is no proof that "French intelligence officers" or French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy are stuck in Mariupol and that getting them out of the city is Macron's intention. Furthermore, April 2022 posts on Bernard-Henri Lévy's Twitter account do not suggest his presence in the besieged Mariupol. Published photos show Lévy in the Ukrainian cities which are not controlled by Russian troops.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation has often targeted Bernard-Henry Lévy in recent years because of his highly critical views of the Putin regime, and his endorsement of popular protests against authoritarian and corrupt governments in various parts of the world.
Lévy has been accused by pro-Kremlin outlets of being an “ideologist of the liberal world order”, "blood lover" and producer of Euromaidan, an intellectual closely linked to Europe’s technocratic-financial élite, as the theoretician of the war in Libya, the intellectual sponsor of the “West’s military aggression against Syria”, and a supporter in Ukraine of "rebels financed by the West to destabilise a sovereign state" during the Euromaidan protests. He was also groundlessly called the person who "inspired the events in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, is now supervising Tsikhanouskaya’s team."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed efforts to investigate reported Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Russia targeted a maternity hospital in Mariupol, another hospital in Mykolaiv, the Luhansk Children's Hospital, a hospital in Volnovakha, and committed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and other towns in the vicinity of Kyiv. The International Criminal Court has initiated the process of collecting and analysing all documents available for a future case against the perpetrators. Read more about the EU's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
See related disinformation claims, alleging that Kyiv's accusations of killings in Bucha are a provocation, that Britain is lying by saying that the Bucha massacre is Russia's fault, that videos from the Ukrainian town Bucha are context-and-evidence-free, and that the West is spreading fakes about Russian atrocities in Bucha.