Anna Hartz
False stories can spread faster than real news, especially when they target emotional topics like food safety or disease.
Many people worry about the quality of what they eat, and they worry even more when a claim involves another country’s products entering their market. This creates an easy opening for those who want to manipulate public opinion. A recent example shows how quickly a fake story can move once it appears on social media.
The story of low-quality Ukrainian grain
Russian propagandist channels on Telegram and bot accounts on X shared a video claiming that cattle in France were suffering from an outbreak of lumpy skin disease, reports Ukrinform. The posts said that a small independent laboratory had supposedly found that the disease came from low-quality grain imported from Ukraine.
They also claimed that the grain was contaminated with mold and mosquito larvae. To make the story seem credible, the posts pointed to what they described as an article from the French agricultural outlet La France Agricole.
The problem is that no such article exists on the real website. The legitimate outlet uses the domain lafranceagricole.fr. The false story appeared on a clone site using a different address. According to registration data, the fake domain was created on February 12, 2026.
Never mentioned Ukraine
It went online only days before it published the claim about “contaminated Ukrainian grain.” The fabricated article also listed Stéphane Foucart as its author, even though his professional profile states clearly that he has never worked for La France Agricole.
When fact-checkers began examining the claims, the clone website had already been taken down. Archived versions remained available through the Internet Archive. They also discovered that the video used by propagandists did not match the outlet’s usual format or branding. The footage was actually taken from a report by the French television channel France 24 about a real outbreak of lumpy skin disease in 2025. The original segment did not mention Ukraine, grain shipments, or contamination of any kind.
This fake story was designed to damage the reputation of Ukrainian products in the European Union. It follows earlier attempts by Russian propaganda to spread false content about Ukrainians living in France.
Sources: Ukrinform
