In reality, the video features a woman talking about anti-government protests in Iran. Propaganda edited the footage and faked the heroine’s voice using AI.
In the pro-Russian segment of the network, a video is circulating. In it, a woman allegedly discusses the injuries suffered by her boyfriend, a participant in anti-Ukrainian protests in Paris. The police supposedly shot him in the leg and refused to provide him with medical care, as a result of which the young man lost his limb. The woman says that tens of thousands of people across Europe are protesting against Zelenskyy’s “murderous and corrupt” regime in Ukraine, but the French government is suppressing these protests.
However, the video spread online is fake. The propagandists resorted to one of their favorite techniques, using real footage from a BBC story, which they supplemented with a cut of stock footage with voiceovers created using AI. At the same time, numerous visual details distinguish the video from the real content of the British broadcaster: for example, the text in such videos is usually written in white font on a transparent background, rather than black on a white background. In addition, individual words are highlighted in red when they are voiced by a narrator, yet this technique is not used in the fake video.
Ironically, the original BBC video actually discusses the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in Iran, a country whose authoritarian regime Russia actively supports and considers its ally. In a story published on the British publication’s social media on March 13, a girl named Nilu says that her boyfriend, who lives in Iran, was shot in the head during the violent suppression of anti-government protests earlier this year. Contrary to propagandists’ claims, doctors managed to save his limb. Due to the US military operation, communication in Iran is currently unstable. Nilu says that over the past month she has only had to call her partner once and for a few seconds only.
There is also no information in open sources that anyone in France was injured while participating in “protests against Ukraine” or about protests like that taking place at all. During February and March 2026, several meetings were indeed held in different cities of the country under the slogans “against imperialist wars and armed escalation” and “for peace,” but none of them were dedicated specifically to Ukraine and criticizing Ukrainian leadership. The rallies were joined by a few dozen to a few hundred people and passed without incident. In contrast, about two thousand people joined the march supporting Ukraine, dedicated to the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion. Participants marched through the capital from Place de la République to Place de la Bastille, holding Ukrainian flags and posters with the inscriptions “Putin is a murderer,” “Hands off Ukraine!” and calls to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. “There is mass support for Ukraine in public opinion, which has not disappeared since the first day of the full-scale invasion of the country by the Russian army on February 24, 2022,” commented MEP Raphael Glucksmann.
As an ally of Ukraine, France regularly becomes a target of Russian propaganda. Read the refutation of another disinformation on this topic in the article Fake: Romanian Foreign Minister Predicted US War Against “Islamized” France.
