Did Russia kill several French "officers" or "mercenaries" during an attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine, in January 2024? No, that's not true: There is no evidence to support the Russian claim, and French officials dismissed it as part of a Russian disinformation campaign, saying the names of the alleged French victims circulating on Russian Telegram channels had been previously reported in 2022, and denying that French mercenaries were present in Ukraine.
The claim appeared in a video in Ukrainian with Czech subtitles, (archived here) published on TikTok on January 25, 2024, with a caption in Czech, translated into English by Lead Stories staff, that reads:
When they do not tell you that there were army officers in the hotel. There were a lot of French officers killed in this case. What were NATO members doing in Kharkiv?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Jan 29 08:05:07 2024 UTC)
The text in the TikTok video above in Czech says French army officers, members of NATO forces, were killed in Kharkiv. A Google News search conducted by Lead Stories on January 30, 2024, (archived here) using the following keywords, "Russia killed French officers Kharkiv," did not return any reports from reputable news outlets that could corroborate such a claim. It did return, though, several news reports about France dismissing Russian claims that during a January 16, 2024 Russian missile strike on Kharkiv, French "mercenaries" had been killed.
According to a Reuters report on January 17, 2024, (archived here) the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that French mercenaries were killed in a missile strike on a temporary base housing "foreign fighters" which, it said, left 60 dead. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also mentioned the incident, saying "French mercenaries" were "destroyed," during his speech at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine on January 22, 2024 (archived here).
The French Foreign Ministry denied the Russian claims (archived here), calling them "a clumsy Russian manipulation," and during comments at a press conference on January 25, 2024, which were posted on the ministry's official account on X (archived here) the Deputy Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry Christophe Lemoine said, translated into English from French by Lead Stories staff:
In recent days, we have noticed a new crude Russian manipulation regarding the presence of mercenaries in #Ukraine. We have said it and repeat it: There are no French mercenaries neither in Ukraine nor elsewhere.
French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu said in a statement on January 26, 2024, that the claim was a coordinated misinformation campaign against France, triggered by Paris's recent assurances of its support for Ukraine (archived here). The press release issued by the ministry said that the Russian disinformation campaign included the dissemination on Telegram channels of a list of names of alleged French mercenaries killed during the strike, and the ministry noted that it contained the same names released during the first weeks of the war in 2022. The ministry also denied a Russian claim that it had destroyed a Franco-Italian weapon system called SAMPT-T supplied to Ukraine.
In addition, the French Foreign Ministry official, Lemoine, also explained during his briefing on January 25, 2024, that while there are no French mercenaries in Ukraine, there were French individuals in the country who made their own decisions and were not tied to the government.
On January 29, 2024, France24 spoke with some of the French nationals who were members of the Ukrainian army and whose names were on the list of the mercenaries allegedly killed in the Russian attack, circulated on social media (archived here). One of them told France24 that he had enlisted in the Ukrainian army but had not left France since he was injured a few months ago. He said he was paid the same as his Ukrainian counterparts and worked under an official contract with the army. According to French security sources, there are about 100 French nationals fighting in Ukraine as volunteers, France24 said.
Ukrainian authorities reported that 17 people were injured in the Kharkiv strike, which hit civilian infrastructure, including a multi-story building, Ukrainska Pravda reported on January 16, 2024, citing Mayor Ihor Terekhov and military officials (archived here). It said that Russia struck Kharkiv with two S-300 missiles.
