The candidate for the French presidential election and leader of the centrist party Renaissance, Gabriel Attal, has denounced being the victim of a disinformation operation by pro-Russian networks, eight months before the first round of voting. In recent days, two other candidates for the Élysée, the center-right Édouard Phillipe (Horizons) and the center-left Raphaël Glucksmann (Public Square) have also been targeted by interference and messages spread on the X network with fake logos of some French media, such as BFM, Le Parisien or France24.
In Attal’s case, content was published suggesting that he suffers from Parkinson’s disease. The General Secretariat for Defense and National Security (SGDSN) confirmed that these are external interferences. “We have been informed by the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security about external interferences coming from Russia and bodies related to the Russian central power against Gabriel Attal,” his circle said.
“If we do nothing to protect ourselves, the elections can be manipulated,” the presidential candidate denounced this Thursday on RTL radio. Attal accused Moscow of “wanting to steal the elections from the French” and warned that some candidates, such as the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, will not suffer these attacks, as “they have always defended Moscow’s interests.”
Viginum, the service responsible for combating foreign digital interference in France, confirmed having detected this disinformation maneuver against the leader of Renaissance, which it attributes with “a high degree of confidence” to the pro-Russian network Matrioshka.
Messages criticizing Phillipe’s health were spread at the end of July, and Glucksmann was attacked by alleging that his partner, journalist Léa Salamé, had bribed some media to favor his candidacy, even though he has not yet officially announced it. In his case, the SGDSN confirmed that the campaign had been orchestrated by Storm-1516, a network linked to the Russian intelligence service. In all cases, these operations went relatively unnoticed, with a few thousand views.
The leader of Public Square has invited platforms like TikTok and X “to respect European rules” and criticized that these platforms are not sanctioned for spreading this type of false messages. The green candidate, Marine Tondelier, has proposed banning the X network during the months of the electoral campaign, which is already underway.
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Even Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the party La France Insoumise, has come out in defense of Attal. He criticized this “unbearable manipulation maneuver” and called for a united front among all presidential candidates against this type of poisoning.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu highlighted that the device set up to detect these manipulations “has worked.” He also announced that, after the summer break, he wants to continue the joint work started with political parties to fight foreign interference in the coming months.
In June, Lecornu met with leaders of some parties to address this issue and already then mentioned a “perspective of serious threats ahead of the presidential elections” and recalled that this concerns the entire political class. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had already denounced destabilization maneuvers in his 2017 and 2022 campaigns.
Last July, the government presented a bill to combat foreign interference. The text foresees toughening penalties for those who spread false news in an electoral context, increasing from one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros to three years and 45,000 euros. If it is proven that these false disseminations were made “to serve the interests of a great power or a foreign organization,” the penalty can rise to six years.
Last year, the French justice system already opened an investigation against the X network, which belongs to billionaire Elon Musk, for alleged manipulation of its algorithm to facilitate foreign interference.