Budanov and Macron’s “assassination” is a large-scale but primitive Russian fake: analysis and refutation

On February 14, the Russian segment of the Internet began to be full of reports of an alleged attempted assassination attempt on French President Emmanuel Macron. The attempt was allegedly being prepared by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the “operation” was supervised by Kyrylo Budanov, and the attempt was prevented by Valeriy Zaluzhnyi. The research and analysis group InfoLight.UA research and analysis group verified this information using artificial intelligence-based narrative tracking systems.

So, in most publications from February 14, the only source of this “information” is a very poor quality video from a TV. The video is so bad that it is technically impossible to make sure that it is not a dipfake.

We would like to point out that the video has Russian subtitles that are wider than the TV in the frame. But according to Russian propaganda, the video was posted by a user of the X network with the nickname @Jose_FERNANDE8. And it is allegedly a story from French television, France 24.

The user exists, but the story on television does not. However, does this concern the Russians, in particular the so-called Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, who is always inspired by delusions.

However, the Russian captions on the video from allegedly France are not the only gap in this fake. In fact, the screenshots mentioned in the video appeared on Telegram on February 12.

Anyone who enjoys studying the clumsy “hellfire” can find something for themselves here. It is clear to everyone in Ukraine that even for Surzhik it is too much)

We publish a timeline of this fake and continue to monitor its development.

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