French former Marine returns from Ukraine shocked

[Burgermeister]

Oh those virtuous Ukrainians..

Speaking to French radio station Sud Radio, Adrien Bocquet said he had witnessed “a lot of war crimes“. All those war crimes were committed by Ukrainian soldiers and not by Russian soldiers, he pointed out. Bocquet is therefore enormously alarmed that Europe is sending weapons to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. They wear all kinds of Nazi symbols on their uniforms. They do not hide these symbols. What is more, they boast about them, he said.

“I worked with them and gave them medicine. Do you know what they said? That they would skin Jews or blacks if they had the chance.” This certainly does not align with the mainstream narrative of saving “democracy” and “our values” in Ukraine.

“People can say whatever they want. I was there. I saw what happened there,” emphasised Bocquet, who says he has made many dozens of videos of war crimes. He saw in a barn Russian prisoners of war who had been beaten and tied up. “Fighters from the Azov battalion asked them who the officers were. Each Russian soldier was shot in the knees with a Kalashnikov. I have videos that prove it, otherwise I would not dare to say such a thing.”

Apparently American media on the ground are helping shape the narrative -

He went on to say that he had seen an American cameraman blatantly staging footage and the Ukrainian army hiding ammunition in homes at night without informing civilians.

French former Marine returns from Ukraine shocked - Free West Media | Free West Media

French ex-soldier Adrien Bocquet spent three weeks in Ukraine and what he saw there will be etched on his mind forever, he said. Once back home he was dismayed to learn that the media keep inviting

freewestmedia.com

 

[jackflash]

Oh those virtuous Ukrainians..


Apparently American media on the ground are helping shape the narrative -

French former Marine returns from Ukraine shocked - Free West Media | Free West Media

French ex-soldier Adrien Bocquet spent three weeks in Ukraine and what he saw there will be etched on his mind forever, he said. Once back home he was dismayed to learn that the media keep inviting

freewestmedia.com

Honestly this would not surprise me one bit.

 

[occupied]

Them poor Russians.

 

[johngaltshrugged]

Wait, so the actual Nazis in Ukraine are committing numerous war crimes & bragging they want to skin Jews & blacks?
Western media is covering for them & we aren't getting the truth?
I am so shocked. Who would ever expect Nazis to be murderous criminal thugs & MSM to lie to us about everything?
Now nitwit will come on & tell us these are all lies & we are all pooty-pie puppets for believing his Nazi overlords could do such a thing

 

[petro]

You know the liberal warmongers are just going to dismiss it again and scream Russian Disinformation.
Just ignore everything you see and follow the narrative.

 

[para bellum]

How Frenchman Adrien Bocquet "whitewashes" Russian crimes in Bucha​

One of the broadcasts of the French radio station Sud Radio on May 10 was devoted to Ukraine. For an hour, the guest in the studio, Adrien Bocquet, explained to the presenters André Berkoff and Augustin Moriaux that the crimes of Boutcha were not the work of the Russian occupiers, but "the war crimes of the Azov regiment". He also said that U.S. journalists who were in Bucha with him were shooting staged videos, while the Ukrainian military themselves were using civilian corpses to stage a "massacre in Bucha." Sounds like the fantasies of Russian propagandists? Indeed.

Adrien Bocquet, former soldier in the French army and author of "Lève-toi et marche! Thanks to science," said he visited Lviv, Bucha and Kiev in April this year. He said he returned from Ukraine at the end of April after spending 16 days there. In other words, Adrien Bocquet would have arrived in Ukraine in mid-April. This is an important point to assess the credibility of his testimony, since Bucha was occupied by Russian troops from late February to April 1. So, long before Adrien Bocquet could, possibly, go there. We will see later that he may have been in Ukraine a little earlier, because the border guards say that he crossed the Polish border on April 4 (StopFake obtained this information from the Ukrainian Embassy in France). But in any case, it was after the liberation of Bucha and the discovery of the massacres that were committed there.

According to him, he went to Ukraine as part of a humanitarian mission to help Ukrainian women, children and refugees (15:28). There are no posts confirming his time at Bucha on his official Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages, although he has used them extensively before. Despite this, during the broadcasts in which he participates, Adrien Bocquet declares that he has "hundreds of videos of war crimes of the Ukrainian army". Not a single video or photo has yet been published or handed over to law enforcement in France, who are directly involved in investigations into war crimes in Ukraine. We contacted Adrien Bocquet for a comment via his Instagram account. But we had not received any response at the time of publication of this article.

The French channel BFM. TV broadcast several photos that confirm Adrien Bocquet's stay in Ukraine as part of a humanitarian mission. These photos were taken in the back of a van bearing the marking of the Charitable Foundation "Shpital Sheptytskogo", which is based in Lviv. In order to understand how long Adrien has been working with the Foundation and what exactly he does there, we asked foundation director Andriy for a comment.

Andriy Login told StopFake that Adrien Bocquet visited the Foundation's office in Lviv only twice and never actually worked with them. During these two visits, Adrien arrived unexpectedly in a private vehicle and brought humanitarian aid packages. Adrien's private tours, with several people accompanying him, took place at lunchtime on April 4 and at midnight on April 6. According to Andriy Login, it was not possible to speak with Adrien and his companions since they only spoke French. In his interviews, Adrien Bocquet claims to understand a little Russian and Ukrainian. This meager knowledge, according to him, was enough to understand what the "Ukrainian Nazis of the Azov regiment in Bucha" were talking about among themselves.

His story, which he told at length in the studios of Sud Radio, brought together all the clichés of Russian propaganda. The details of the story are also confusing and they contradict the known chronology of events that happened in the Ukrainian city of Bucha in April. But the presenters, without asking any detailed questions, listened to him with interest. Thus, on the antenna of Sud Radio on May 10, Adrien Bocquet claims that during his stay in Ukraine, he helped the Ukrainian military (which he would later describe as "Nazis") by providing them with medicine and first aid (while the initial purpose of his visit was supposedly to help refugees and civilians in Ukraine). Later, having established friendly contacts with the Azov regiment, Adrien is said to have witnessed numerous crimes committed by the Ukrainian military.

However, in April 2022, when he was able to visit Ukraine, there were no more military actions in Bucha. Also, there were no wounded and even fewer Russian soldiers taken prisoner. Bucha had been occupied by Russian troops from late February to April 1. On April 1, the first video showing corpses on the streets of the city was released in the evening. In other words, it is impossible that Adrien Bocquet could have been in Bucha and observe "neo-Nazis committing war crimes".
...

Adrien Bocquet then moves on to his main story, namely how the fighters of the Azov regiment would have killed Russian prisoners of war before his eyes. "I saw Russian prisoners of war who were tied up and beaten. We were in a shed and they arrived in small vans carrying 3-4 people. "The people of Azov asked them, 'Who is an officer here?' Everyone who got out of that van was shot in the knee with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. And those who said, "I'm an officer," were shot in the head. This is what is happening in Bucha. I've seen it all. I have videos that prove it. » (21:00).

In another interview on his YouTube channel VA Plus, Adrien Bocquet completes his story. He claims to have seen Azov soldiers who allegedly forbade helping wounded Russian soldiers along the road to Bucha. According to him, they would have finished them with a Kalashnikov. "Those who could not be completed were shot in the head," said Adrien (14:00).

The absurdity of this statement consists in the fact that in Bucha, between mid-April and the end of April, there was no more fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops. As a result, it has not been possible to provide medical assistance to military or civilian personnel. Thus, the "valuable information" shared by Adrien Bocquet in the French media is a lie.

The Frenchman seems to have invented this story of murders in the presence of the Russian army, because its plot coincides perfectly with a video that was actively broadcast on Russian channels at the end of March in order to discredit the Ukrainian army. It shows a group of soldiers shooting at the legs of prisoners who came out of a van. The video shows the soldiers asking the captives which of them is an officer. It is understandable from their conversation that the events are taking place near Kharkiv. In other words, Adrien Bocquet is only recounting the content of the video and not the actual scene he observed in Bucha. In addition, a group of French gendarmes arrived in Ukraine on April 11 to investigate war crimes committed around Kiev. This was reported by the French ambassador to Ukraine, Etienne de Poncins. None of the witnesses interviewed provided testimony that resembles, even from a distance, the stories shared by Adrien Bocquet.

The Frenchman seems to have invented this story of murders in the presence of the Russian army, because its plot coincides perfectly with a video that was actively in Bucha, Adrien would also have observed American journalists shooting fake videos and photos, making them look like evidence of Russian bombings. "I also saw American journalists watch bombs fall in a small park near Bucha, east of Bucha. The Americans were making a video and saying it was the Russians who were bombing. They said 'it will be a nice picture'" (22:00). Needless to say, it was simply impossible to observe such scenes in Bucha in mid-April. No shells fired by the Russian or Ukrainian military could be seen there. At the same time, Adrien Bocquet maintains that the Bucha massacre was staged. His version of the "Bucha massacre" coincides perfectly with one of the versions of Russian propaganda, which, among other things, is broadcast for foreign media. She claims that Bucha's bodies were real, but were moved there by the Ukrainian military (25:00).

But, even after everything he saw, Adrien Bocquet still managed to get back into France. Even though, according to him, Azov's fighters held him for 10 hours, while checking his phone (apparently without noticing hundreds of videos and photos of war crimes, which the Frenchman claims to still have) (28:23). Adrien is most likely misinformed about how "real" inspections – such as those conducted by the Russian military in the "filtration camps" of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – are conducted. People are forced to stay for days or weeks before being taken away for questioning and having their phones and the content of their social media profiles fully verified.

Adrien Bocquet tries to convince the French with his story that Russia was forced to start the war only because of the real threat posed to Donbas by the Ukrainian Nazis and the Ukrainian authorities, who allegedly "annihilated the pro-Russian population of the region for 8 years". This version of events is very familiar to anyone who has ever encountered Russian propaganda. At the end of the program, Adrien Bocquet leads the listeners of Sud Radio to the conclusion that "if Macron had been faced with a situation where 14,000 French had been killed out of France, he would probably have done the same thing (carry out a military invasion of a neighboring state – editor's note)". (42:00). It turns out that Adrien Bocquet shares the opinion that Russia started the war preemptively, because Ukraine "gathered a large number of Ukrainian soldiers on the borders of Donbas, ready to launch an invasion" (44:00).

Recall that one of the arguments for launching an all-out war with Ukraine was the existence of a "genocide in the Donbas", in which civilians were killed and the rights of the Russian-speaking population were violated. This account has been refuted many times by international organizations such as the UN and the OSCE, which have not found such facts. According to the UN, some 14,500 people were killed in Donbas during Russia's military action against Ukraine from 2014 to 2021. Of these, 3,500 were civilians, 4,500 were Ukrainian military personnel and 6,500 were members of Russian armed gangs. That is, the figure used by Putin is the total number of military and civilian deaths on both sides, as StopFake has written several reprises.

Adrien Bocquet's words are becoming a weapon for Russian propaganda in the West. However, quotes are also widely circulated in the Russian media. For example, statements made on the French antenna Sud Radio were published on the social media accounts of the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova. Adrien Bocquet's alleged "testimonies" also served as the basis for publications in Russian propaganda media such Gazeta.ru, Izvestia, Lenta.ru, Komsomolskaya Pravda and other Russian media.

Perviy Kanal's article aimed at showing "video evidence of war crimes committed by the Ukrainian army", the same anonymous video shot near Kharkiv, which first appeared online in late March, was used and has nothing to do with Adrien Bocquet. To date, no video evidence allegedly in the possession of Adrien Bocquet has been published or shared with the competent authorities.

Adrien Bocquet, through his fictional account, serves French public opinion the same arguments that Russia uses to justify aggression against Ukraine. StopFake urges European media officials to examine the backgrounds of experts who are invited to the studio to discuss the Russo-Ukrainian war. Giving a voice to pro-Russian propagandists who deliver rather confusing information is unacceptable.

Update: We changed this story after receiving additional information about Adrien Bocquet's contacts with the Charitable Foundation "Shpital Sheptytskogo".

Comment le Français Adrien Bocquet "blanchit" les crimes russes à Boutcha

L'une des émissions de la station de radio française Sud Radio du 10 mai était consacrée à l'Ukraine. Pendant une heure, l'invité en studio, Adrien Bocquet, a expliqué aux présentateurs André Berkoff et Augustin Moriaux que les crimes de Boutcha n'étaient pas l'œuvre des occupants russes, mais "les

www.stopfake.org

 

[Rigby5]

The absurdity of this statement consists in the fact that in Bucha, between mid-April and the end of April, there was no more fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops. As a result, it has not been possible to provide medical assistance to military or civilian personnel. Thus, the "valuable information" shared by Adrien Bocquet in the French media is a lie.

It is obvious that YOU are lying.
Those dead bodies in the street were not dead long enough to have been killed by the Russians.
The were ethnic Russian civilians murdered by the fascist Azov Battalion AFTER the Russians had left.

 

[para bellum]

It is obvious that YOU are lying.
Those dead bodies in the street were not dead long enough to have been killed by the Russians.
The were ethnic Russian civilians murdered by the fascist Azov Battalion AFTER the Russians had left.

Well you should register your complaint with the author if you think he didn't treat the fake French journalist fairly.

The massacre at Bucha is confirmed by satellite imaging before the Russians left. No amount of denials or propaganda can change that now.

Bucha is nothing compared to Mariupol, 20,000 dead and rotting in the rubble, they are just bulldozing the bodies along with the debris.

The propaganda peddlers are getting skeered, lol.

From ISW:

"Alarm in the Russian nationalist information space continues to grow as the pace of Russian operations slows in the face of successful Ukrainian high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) strikes on key Russian logistics and command-and-control nodes."