Frenchman Adrien Bocquet “whitewashing” Russian crimes in Bucha

Islamabad/ Editor’s Monitoring Desk – One of the broadcasts of France’s Sud Radio on May 10 was dedicated to Ukraine. The guest in the studio, Adrien Bocquet, spoke with the hosts André Bercoff and Augustin Mauriaux for a good hour, claiming that the Bucha crimes had, in fact, not been committed by the Russian occupiers. His allegation is that these were “war crimes of the Azov Regiment.” He also claimed that some American journalists he saw in Bucha were filming staged reports, and that the Ukrainian forces used the bodies of civilians to stage the “Bucha massacre” hoax. Any resemblance to classic Russian propaganda reporting? That’s what it is, exactly.

Adrien Bocquet, a former rifleman with the French army and author of Get Up and Walk Due to Science, said he had traveled to Lviv, Bucha, and Kyiv in April this year. He also said he had returned from Ukraine late April, after spending 16 days there. That is, Adrien Bocquet got to Ukraine in mid-April. This is an important point in assessing the credibility of any “evidence” he provides. According to the Frenchman, he came to Ukraine with a humanitarian mission to help women, children, and Ukrainian refugees (15:28).

There is no data confirming that he actually was in Bucha on his Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, although he had been using these platforms quite actively before. Despite this fact, in his media appearances, Adrien Bocquet claims he has obtained “hundreds of videos of war crimes committed by the Ukrainian military.”

Not a single video or photo has yet been published or handed over to French law enforcement, which is directly involved in the Bucha war crime investigation.
We reached out to Adrien Bocquet for a comment, via his Instagram account, but he never returned our inquiry as of the time this story was published.

France’s BFM.TV aired several photos that allegedly confirm Adrien Bocquet’s visit to Ukraine as part of a humanitarian mission. These photos show on the background a van that with the logo of the Sheptytsky Hospital Charity

Foundation, which is actually located in Lviv. In order to find out how long Adrien has been working with the organization and what exactly he was doing there, we turned to the Foundation chief, Andriy Lohin.

Lohin told StopFake that Adrien Bocquet had visited the Charity’s branch in Lviv only twice and never systematically worked with them. During both visits, Adrien arrived unannounced, using private transport, bringing some packages of humanitarian aid. Adrien made his private visits alongside several people accompanying him at lunchtime on April 4 and at about midnight on April 6. At the same time, according to Andriy Lohin, no one could speak with Adrian and his companions as the they all spoke only French (although in his interviews, Adrien

Bocquet claims that he understands both Russian and Ukrainian a little, thanks to which he allegedly found out what the “Ukrainian Nazis with the Azov Regiment were chatting about in Bucha).

His story, which is shared over and over again in the studios of French media outlets, contains clear signs of Russian propaganda clichés. The details of the story are also confusing as they contradict the objective timeline of what was happening in the Ukrainian town of Bucha throughout April. Anyone who followed the events of the war in Ukraine even superficially would notice this. However, the French broadcasters seem to be listening to his story with interest, without asking any detailed questions.

So, on the air of the Sud Radio on May 10, Adrien Bocquet assures the audience and hosts that during his stay in Ukraine, he helped the Ukrainian military (whom he would later brand as “Nazis”) with medicines and provided them with first aid (despite the fact that the purpose of his visit initially declared was allegedly to help refugees and the civilian population of Ukraine). Later, having allegedly established friendly contacts with some of the Azov Regiment fighters, Adrien claims he witnessed multiple crimes committed by the Ukrainian forces.

From the mid- to late April April 2022, when he presumably visited Ukraine, Bucha was no longer a zone of hostilities. There were no wounded Russian soldiers there, let alone those taken prisoner. Bucha had been temporarily occupied by Russian troops from late February to April 1. As early as on the evening of April 1, the first piece of footage, showing bodies scattered across city streets, appeared on the internet. This means there was no way Adrien Bocquet could be in Bucha at that period and witness “neo-Nazis committing war crimes.”

Adrien Bocquet tells several stories about the “crimes” of the Ukrainian forces. First, he claims that the Azov fighters are literally everywhere across Ukraine, even in its Western part (where, as is known, no active hostilities have taken place) (19:00). According to the Frenchman, the Azov forces sport “neo-Nazi stripes and everyone’s okay with that.” “I worked with these guys, gave them medicines. Do you know what their chats were about? Since I understand Ukrainian and Russian a little, I heard they bragged they would kill all Jews or blacks if they see any.” To the host’s remark that the Azov is actually only a small part of the Armed Forces of

Ukraine (while the Azov Regiment is actually a division of the National Guard of Ukraine – ed.), Adrien Bocquet replied that “there are 5,000 of them officially, but there are volunteers, who have joined their ranks, so their number might be four to five times higher. There are at least 20,000 of them. 20,000 is a huge battalion for Ukraine.” (27:00).

In fact, the population of Ukraine is estimated at 42 million, so even 20,000 forces, even hypothetically, would not be a large number for the nation. As of early 2022, over 246,000 people served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including 195,000 military personnel. Provided that the Azov is a 5,000-strong unit, with which Adrien Bocquet tentatively agrees, this would amount to some 2.5% of the entire manpower.

Therefore, the statement that Azov fighters were “everywhere” where Adrien Bocquet traveled in Ukraine just can’t be true. The Azov Regiment also has no serious recruiting system, so the claim about the number of volunteers, which can be four times higher than the base of Azov forces, can’t be true either.

“So why is Europe helping them with weapons? Those Nazis wearing SS patches?” Adrian repeatedly asks in all his media appearances dedicated to Ukraine (27:00). The command of the Azov Regiment has repeatedly stated it does not share Nazi ideology.

“There is not a word about inviting to our ranks any ultra-right organizations or persons who support this (Nazi – ed.) worldview,” explained Regiment Commander Denys Prokopenko. Andriy Biletsky, founder and first Commander of the Azov Regiment, in a recent interview also noted that “in order to call something fascist, one must first look not at pictures, but at real facts.

Fascism is genocide, the killing of civilians, the elimination of the traces of such killings, aggressive wars against third states. Only Russia fits all these criteria.” The logo of the Azov Regiment also has nothing to do with Nazi symbols, it is called the “Idea of ​​the Nation” and was invented in 1991.

You can learn more about the views and beliefs of the Azov from a video stream, which was set up for foreign journalists on May 8 from the bunkers of the Azovstal steelworks, where Azov fighters are now fighting for their country. But for Russian propaganda, the Azov Regiment is precisely the proof of “Nazism” that led Russia to start a full-scale war with Ukraine, resulting in thousands of casualties. Now, when the Azov fighters are defending the last stronghold in Mariupol, the city practically wiped out by Russian troops, it is important for Russia to convince the whole world that there was a real reason for the invasion of Ukraine, and that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are war criminals, just like the Russian troops.

Then Adrien Bocquet moves on to his main story about the Azov fighters allegedly executing Russian POWs right before his eyes. “I saw Russian prisoners of war who had been tied up and beaten. We were in the hangar and they were brought in in small vans, in groups of three to four people. “Azov” asked them: “Who’s the officer here?” Each of those who got out of those vans was shot in the knee with a Kalashnikov. And those who confirmed they were officers were shot in the head.

That’s what was going on in Bucha. I saw it all. I have videos to prove it.” (21:00) In another interview on the VA Plus YouTube channel, Adrien Bocquet supplements the story with a new episode, talking about how he allegedly saw the Azov did not allow anyone to provide assistance to the Russian wounded soldiers lying along the road in Bucha, and finished them off with a Kalashnikov. “Those who weren’t immediately killed were shot in the head,” says Adrien (14:00).

The whole absurdity of the statement lies in the fact that in the period from mid- to late April, there were no longer any hostilities underway between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Bucha. Accordingly, it was impossible that any wounded servicemen or civilians required any first aid on the ground. Thus, the “valuable information” shared by Adrien Bocquet on the air of the French media outlet is an outright lie.

The Frenchman also apparently invented the story of himself being witness to the executions of the Russian military, since its plot is completely identical with that of the video, which was actively spun across Russian media platforms late March in order to compromise the Ukrainian Army.

It shows a group of soldiers shooting at the legs of POWs who were being led out of the van. In the video, a serviceman ask the POWs which of them is an officer. From the conversation heard in the video, it can be assumed that the events are unfolding somewhere outside Kharkiv, which is eastern Ukraine. That is, Adrien Bocquet is simply retelling the content of the said video rather than any actual scene he allegedly observed in Bucha. Besides, on April 11, a detachment of CSI team of French gendarmes arrived in Ukraine to investigate war crimes committed in settlements outside Kyiv.

This was reported by the French Ambassador to Ukraine, Étienne de Poncin. None of the witnesses interviewed by the team provided evidence even remotely similar to the stories shared by Adrien Bocquet.

In Bucha, Adrien also allegedly observed American journalists making staged videos and photos, passing them off as evidence of Russian shelling. “I also saw American journalists watching the bombs drop in a small park near Bucha, in Bucha’s eastern part. The Americans were shooting a video, saying it was the Russians who were bombing the place. They said ‘this would be a nice image’ (22:00). Needless to say, in mid-April, it was simply impossible to observe such scenes in Bucha.

There could no longer be any shells fired by either Russian or Ukrainian forces. At the same time, Adrien Bocquet claims that the Bucha massacres were a hoax (although he could not be in the city when the first victims were discovered, unless he moved into Ukraine alongside Russian invaders).

His version of the “Bucha massacre” is fully in line with one of the versions put forward by Russian propaganda, which, among other narratives, is broadcast to foreign media. The message is that allegedly the bodies seen Bucha were real, but planted there by the Ukrainian forces (25:00).

Despite everything he allegedly saw, Adrien Bocquet still managed to return to France unharmed, although he adds, the Azov fighters had allegedly held him at their base for 10 hours, while screening his phone (and, apparently, failing to find “hundreds of videos and photos” of war crimes, which, according to the Frenchman, he still possesses) (28:23). Adrien is most likely ill-informed about how “real” screening is run – for example that carried out by the Russian military in notorious “filtration camps” of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where people are held for days or even weeks before they are taken for interrogation and the content of their phones and social media are fully checked.

Adrien Bocquet is trying to convince the French with his story that Russia was forced to start a war solely because of the real threat to Donbas posed by the Ukrainian Nazis and Ukrainian authorities, who allegedly “had been destroying the pro-Russian population of the region for all eight years.”

This version of events is very familiar to anyone who has ever come across Russian propaganda. At the end of the radio broadcast, Adrien Bocquete leads the Sud Radio audience to the conclusion that “if Macron had a situation where 14,000 Frenchmen have been killed outside of France, perhaps he would have done the same (invaded a neighboring state – ed.)” (42:00). As it turned out, Adrien Bocquete also shares the opinion that Russia started the war preemptively, as Kyiv had “gathered a large number of Ukrainian troops on the borders of Donbas, ready to launch an invasion.” (44:00).

It should be recalled that Putin used among the arguments for starting a full-scale war with Ukraine the so-called “genocide in Donbas,” where civilians were allegedly murdered en masse and the rights of the Russian speakers were heavily infringed. The narrative has already been refuted more than once by international organizations, including the UN and the OSCE, which have found no proof that would back such allegations. According to the UN, throughout the period of hostilities waged by Russia against Ukraine from 2014 to 2021, about 14,500 people died in Donbas.

Among them, 3,500 civilians, 4,500 Ukrainian military personnel, and 6,500 members of Russian proxy forces. That is, the figure that Putin operates is the total number of military and civilian casualties on both sides, on which StopFake has repeatedly reported.

Any shows starring Adrien Bocquet become a weapon of Russian propaganda targeting Western audiences. Also, quotes from such shows are widely circulated across the Russian media. Thus, the statements made on the air of the French Sud Radio were posted on social networks by Russian Foreign Ministry spox Maria Zakharova. The hoax “evidence” provided by Adrien Bocquet also lie at the core of recent reporting by such Russian propaganda media platforms as Gazeta.ru, Izvestia, Lenta.ru, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and other Russian media.

In a TV report by Russia’s government-run Channel One claiming “video evidence of war crimes committed by the Ukrainian military,” the same anonymous footage was used, filmed near Kharkiv, which first appeared on the internet in late March and had nothing to do with Adrien Bocquet. So far, none of the video evidence allegedly obtained by Adrien Bocquet has been released or shared with EU law enforcement.

Adrien Bocquet, through his fictitious story, imposes on the French public the same arguments Russia is using to justify the aggression against Ukraine. His sham “evidence” that Ukraine allegedly also commits crimes against the civilian population, that it’s a Nazi state responsible for the “genocide in Donbas,” aims to lead to viewers to believe that everything “isn’t that simple” because Russia allegedly had valid reasons to unleash a full-scale war against Ukraine.

StopFake encourages the editorial staff of European media outlets to study the background of experts they invite to comment on the Russian-Ukrainian war. Offering the floor to pro-Russian propagandists who provide rather dubious information about the details of their Ukraine trip and make statements based solely on the “Kremlin playbook” is unacceptable.

UPD. We updated the piece after receiving additional information about Adrien Bocquet’s contacts with the Sheptytsky Hospital Charity Foundation.