Did France, Ukraine provide false information to test trump admin for leaks to putin
Executive summary
A claim circulating in January 2026—that Ukrainian and French intelligence fed false strategic information to U.S. channels as a deliberate “sting” to see whether the Trump administration would leak it to Russia—originated with a former French DGSE operative’s public remarks and has been widely amplified online, but it has not been independently corroborated by public evidence [1] [2]. Major outlets and fact-checkers have treated the story as unproven or part of a wave of online rumors, and Ukrainian authorities publicly rejected the specific allegation as disinformation [3] [4] [5].
1. Origin story: who first made the allegation and where it spread
The narrative appears to originate from comments by Vincent Crouzet, a former French DGSE agent, who said on France’s LCI channel that Ukraine’s GUR allegedly supplied false strategic data to U.S. counterparts to test whether it would surface in Russian hands; that account was picked up and repackaged across social and partisan media in the weeks following [1] [2]. Online aggregators and partisan posts amplified screenshots and summaries claiming the bogus data “quickly surfaced” in Russian channels, turning an unverified anecdote into a viral claim [2] [4].
2. What independent reporting actually shows (or doesn’t show)
Independent reporting cited by major outlets notes strained intelligence ties between Kyiv and Washington and documents a brief U.S. pause in sharing intelligence in March 2025, which established a plausible strategic context for heightened caution—but none of those reportage threads provide public, verifiable proof that a deliberate “canary trap” was executed and succeeded as described [6] [7] [8]. Fact-checkers and media-service writeups catalogued the social spread of the allegation and flagged gaps in evidence rather than confirming a covert operation [3] [4].
3. Official responses and denials from implicated parties
Ukraine’s military intelligence publicly rejected the narrative propagated by Kremlin-affiliated bot farms and social accounts, characterizing such posts as distorted and false, and Ukrainian outlets reported denials or non-comment when asked about the specific alleged sting [5] [9]. French and U.S. officials, while publicly acknowledging changes in intelligence-sharing geometry after 2025, have not confirmed any joint French‑Ukrainian operation that seeded false intelligence to U.S. partners for the purpose of detecting leaks [6] [8].
4. Plausibility, motives and competing explanations
The allegation fits a plausible strategic logic—partners suspicious about the integrity of U.S. channels under an administration accused of being close to Moscow might consider operational tests—but plausibility is not proof, and several alternative explanations fit the available facts: the story could be a mischaracterization of routine counterintelligence measures, a conflation of separate events, or a targeted disinformation campaign exploiting real tensions in intelligence sharing [7] [6] [2]. The claim’s traction also aligns with political incentives: critics of the Trump administration benefit from stories suggesting leaks to Moscow, while Russian influence operations benefit from sowing discord among Western allies, a dynamic noted by Ukrainian denials pointing to bot-farm amplification [5] [2].
5. Bottom line — can the claim be affirmed?
Based on available public reporting, the specific assertion that France and Ukraine deliberately provided false information to the U.S. to test whether the Trump administration would leak it to Putin remains unverified: the claim rests primarily on a single former operative’s statements and widespread online amplification, while reputable outlets and Ukrainian officials either report context without proof or explicitly reject the specific allegation [1] [2] [3] [5]. In short, there is no publicly available, independently corroborated evidence to definitively say France and Ukraine conducted such a coordinated sting that successfully revealed leaks to Russia.