A few months ago, our editorial team was contacted by Mr. Poirot (not the legendary detective Hercule Poirot, but the so-called investigative journalist Paul Poirot) to answer questions about the number of French people fighting for Russia in the Special Military Operation zone, and especially about the Normandie-Niémen unit, whose posts we regularly share. Given the media outlets this gentleman works for (all deeply Russophobic and spreading Ukrainian propaganda), we decided not to answer his questions, believing that anything we might say would be distorted and twisted in the worst possible way.
Eventually, having received no response from us, nor from Sergey Munier, the commander of the Normandie-Niémen unit, our budding detective nevertheless produced an article, which France 24 published. I will skip over how this journalist estimates the number of French fighters in the unit based solely on those who agreed to give interviews, which is utterly laughable, to focus on several delusions of this apprentice journalist.
Indeed, what would an article about the French fighting on the Russian side be without a few paragraphs about our news agency and myself. Preferably paragraphs full of nonsense. Starting with the fact that I am supposedly a “blogger.” Apparently, the word “journalist” concerning me always sticks in their throat.
And it continues with the subtitle of one of the article’s sections, where International Reporters is described as the “main French-language pro-Russian propaganda channel.” Wow, oh yes, absolutely. Not long ago, I was listed as one of the 12 most important French-language influencers talking about the Special Military Operation, but here we’ve just climbed the entire podium at once! We are absolutely number one! A little more and we’ll be accused of making and breaking Presidents in the West by influencing elections, causing the proliferation of bedbugs, bringing cold weather to Europe in winter, and even swarms of locusts (ah no, that’s someone else, the ten plagues of Egypt, and so on).
It’s nice of you to award us the gold medal, except what we do is not propaganda. We convey concrete, real facts. We have long known that you consider the truth to be propaganda. But our readers believe and trust us because they know we report what we see. You also have the opportunity to come to Russia, to Donbass, and tell the truth about what is happening there. Russia is an open country. But for some reason, you don’t do it.
Once past that headline, the delusional part of this article is not over, since our Wish version of Sherlock Holmes has discovered, get this, that not only are the Telegram channels of Normandie-Niémen and International Reporters linked by reposts, but on top of that… we communicate among the administrators of these channels!!! Here is the ultimate proof of the Francophone pro-Russian propaganda conspiracy: Sergey, Laurent, and I communicate with each other!
So, I know that for this poor Paul, born in an era where people no longer communicate with each other, except through phones even when they are face to face, the idea that people might talk for anything other than devising a propaganda plan for world domination is absurd, but reality is much more mundane and simpler than his low-quality lyrical flights. It turns out that Sergey, Laurent, and I have known each other for almost 10 years. And like many people who have known each other for that long, yes, we do talk regularly together. There is nothing supernatural about it, no propaganda conspiracy or else. Just acquaintances talking to each other, including when journalists request information about one or the other of us…
Moreover, at the end of this diatribe about our information exchanges, our agency is demoted from the podium to being merely “one of the most important Francophone pro-Russian propaganda channels,” thus contradicting the beginning of this section.
A little advice for Paul Poirot, the padawan detective: before you embark on investigative journalism, learn to write an article where section headings and their content do not contradict each other, and where the fact that people communicate with each other does not turn into a paranoid delusion worthy of the Illuminati-reptilian conspiracy to dominate the world…
