A fabricated Euronews video which claims that Romania cautioned French authorities over interference in the Romanian presidential election runoff last Sunday has been circulating on social media in the aftermath of the vote.
The report fraudulently bears the Euronews logo and alleges that Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the French government a "note of protest" for attempting to meddle in the presidential elections with the help of messaging app Telegram.
Euronews did not produce or publish the video, and our branding was copied without consent. Our teams are working to ensure the video is removed from all social platforms.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania issued a statement on X "adamantly refuting" the content of the video falsely attributed to Euronews, and pointing to "a sustained campaign of foreign information manipulation and interference aimed at influencing Romania’s public opinion and more recently its elections."
"This campaign is still ongoing and has all the hallmarks of (Russian) disinformation and covert anti-NATO and anti-EU propaganda campaigns," the statement adds.
Romania's foreign, interior and defence ministries have also previously denounced what they called "Russian interference" in Sunday's runoff, which saw pro-European centrist Nicușor Dan narrowly beat nationalist George Simion to the Romanian presidency.
Meanwhile, France's ministry of foreign affairs told Euronews that "no letter was sent by the Romanian government", attributing the doctored report to "Matryoshka, one of the many Russian disinformation operations targeting France."
The captioned video was first spotted by Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, a government agency. Its format strongly resembles Euronews' social media videos, but the content is inauthentic.
It comes after Pavel Durov, the Russian-born owner of Telegram, claimed on social media that France's intelligence chief asked him to "silence" Romanian conservative voices by banning them from his messaging app ahead of Sunday's presidential run-off.
There is no evidence to back Durov's claims, which the French interior ministry has described as a "diversionary maneuver from the real threats of interference targeting Romania."
But Durov's allegations have since triggered a flood of disinformation on social media.
Durov, who was indicted in France last September on six charges related to illegal activity on Telegram, has said he would "testify" in favour of Simion when he contests Sunday's runoff result before the Romanian Constitutional Court.
Antibot4Navalny, an anonymous group of disinformation researchers, shared on Thursday screenshots of reports mimicking major French media outlets including Le Parisien, Libération and BFMTV.
The collective has linked the campaign to Operation Matryoshka, which the French cyber agency Viginum describes as posting "fake content that generally impersonates North American and European public figures and media outlets, including French ones."
The falsified reports are all based on Durov's statements, but have relayed slightly different unfounded narratives.
For example, a fake Radio France Internationale (RFI) report claims journalists have announced "mass protests" against President Emmanuel Macron's "censorship" in response to Durov's allegations.
A fake BFMTV falsely claims Macron's popularity rating has "plummeted" in response to Durov's claims.
Euronews' fact-checking team, Euroverify, has seen the video shared multiple times on pro-Russian Telegram accounts, garnering at least 85,000 views at the time of publication of this article.
