DISINFO: Test case 06/11 Admin
SUMMARY
Sputnik Afrique reports that French analyst Bertrand Scholler describes the high-school demonstrations as reflecting a much broader social malaise. According to the article, Scholler says 90–95% of French people feel this malaise and contrasts their situation with the comfortable lives of wealthy elites. He characterises France as being in a “pre-revolutionary” situation.
The article also reports Scholler’s criticism of President Emmanuel Macron’s budget policy. He claims that public debt rose by €1.5 trillion during the COVID-19 period and stands at €3.6 trillion, and argues that Macron’s approach to spending on Ukraine repeats the “whatever it takes” policy used during the pandemic.
RESPONSE
The article gives no survey, methodology or other evidence for Scholler’s estimate that 90–95% of French people feel this way. Calling the situation “pre-revolutionary” is his political characterisation, not a substantiated finding about France. The article also provides no accounting basis for the debt figures or evidence that spending on Ukraine is equivalent to pandemic-era spending; these figures and comparisons would need to be checked against reliable public-finance data.
The claims fit a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative that France and other Western countries are in social and economic collapse, and that support for Ukraine is worsening their financial problems. The article presents these broad conclusions through an interviewee’s assertions without substantiating them.
A conspiracy theory claiming that the student protests in France are the target of false flag operations allegedly carried out by the French state.
Following the French high school protest movement that began in mid-September 2026, with the cost of damage reported to have reached €45 million and 2,000 schools shut across the country at the height of the mobilisation, narratives have emerged claiming that the violence is caused solely by disguised police officers acting to provide a pretext for arrests, repression, violence resulting in mutilations, or simply to discredit the movement in the eyes of the public.
The argument goes further, alleging that this constitutes repression directed at families opposed to support for Ukraine in the face of Russia's invasion.
The programme presents no evidence to support these claims and merely asserts that the alleged state conspiracy has been widely proven and documented.
Far from being the victim of a state plot, the protest movement has itself become a target of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has said the high school protests were exploited by hostile narratives emanating from Russia, among other actors, and Russia-linked disinformation networks, including those behind the Operation Overload and Doppelgänger campaigns, have seized on the violence to amplify their online operations. While President Macron has noted there is no evidence that foreign interference sparked the unrest, he confirmed that foreign information manipulation took place in its aftermath. This fits a well-established pattern: pro-Kremlin outlets do not need to create social discontent in Europe, but they latch onto genuine grievances to deepen divisions, portray European democracies as repressive, and link domestic issues to their narratives on the war against Ukraine – exactly as this false flag claim does.
Read also cases related to alleged false flag operations such as : The West fabricated the Leipzig Airport drone incident, or Drone in Leipzig was a false flag operation like the poisoning of the Skripals, or German investigators considering possibility that Leipzig explosive-laden drone was a Ukrainian false flag operation, or French authorities set up violence at peaceful Yellow Vests' anniversary rally.