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After French President Emmanuel Macron stated that France was now providing two-thirds of all intelligence to Ukraine on January 15, 2026, a rumor spread that this was due to Ukraine providing false information to the US, which the US then leaked to Russia, revealing the US to be an unreliable intelligence partner for Ukraine.
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Snopes found no evidence to support the rumor that Ukraine shared false information with the US. Instead, this part of the claim stems from an apparent misunderstanding of a January 16, 2026, interview on a French television news channel.
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In that interview, Vincent Crouzet — a former intelligence officer at the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency — said, without citing any source, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected the U.S. of leaking information to Russia, prompting Ukraine to stop sharing information with the U.S. in an X. post two days later, Crouzet appeared to deny the claim that those leaks involved intentionally false information.
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We reached out to Crouzet to ask him about his evidence for these alleged leaks and whether there was any indication that Ukraine was involved in intentionally providing false information to the US. We’ll update this story if we learn more.
On January 15, 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that France now provides two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence. Soon after, a rumor spread that Ukraine relied so heavily on French intelligence because Ukraine allegedly gave false US intelligence, which the US then leaked to Russia, revealing the US as an unreliable intelligence partner for Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, starting a war that was ongoing in early 2026.
The complaint spread across X, Substack, Medium, Bluesky and Reddit. Several posts, including a Facebook post by a page called The Liberal Agenda (archived), featured a screenshot of an X post by user Luc Rombout. The screenshot said:
Interesting message on the French news channel LCI:
“Ukrainian intelligence services sent false strategic information to US intelligence services … and observed that the information was passed to the RUS and used by the RUS forces.”
=> total replacement of USA as Intell partner with FRA, GBR, DEU [France, the U.K., Germany]
“Trump is leaking information about our allies in Russia,” the caption of the Facebook post reads.
Snopes could find no evidence to support the rumor that Ukraine shared false information with the US. Instead, this claim appeared to stem from a misunderstanding of an interview broadcast on January 16, 2026, on the French television station LCI.
The subject of the interview was Vincent Crouzet, who previously worked at the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency. He said in the interview, without citing his sources, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected that the US had leaked information to Russia, prompting Ukraine to stop sharing information with the US.
Asked to clarify his claim that the US leaked Ukrainian information to Russia, Crouzet said in a January 18 (archived) X post, translated:
No, I didn’t say that: I said that the Ukrainians suspected risks of leaking information from the US to the Russians.
Snopes contacted Crouzet to ask what evidence he could provide that the Ukrainians suspect leaks from the US to Russia, and whether there is any reason to believe that Ukraine has provided the US with false information. We will update this report if we receive a response.
Due to the fact that I could not independently verify or deny these details, I have not given this report a rating.
The interview that sparked the rumor
The rumor spread, in part, through the screenshot of Rombout’s X post, who identified himself on his LinkedIn page as the head of a crisis management center.in Belgium.
Rombout’s post appeared to reshare a video clip posted on the 24H Pujadas account. 24H Pujadas is a program on LCI, considered reputable in France.
The clip itself was genuine and was not created or altered using artificial intelligence (AI) editing tools. Snopes identified an X post by the TV program 24H Pujadas with the video (archived) and a full video of the segment on the day of the broadcast, 16 January 2026. The presenter that day was the French journalist Yves Calvi.
Rombout appears to have deleted his original X post that made the claim. In a later post, he said in French that he had quoted the discussion from the French news program, implying that the claim did not come from him.
A review of the televised interview showed that Crouzet said, in the context of discussion of Macron’s speech announcing that France was now providing two-thirds of its intelligence to Ukraine, that two Ukrainian intelligence officials had decided to stop sharing information with the US because of a lack of trust (our emphasis):
So this announcement has flown a little under the radar, but it’s essential. It is essential in two ways. First of all, because it marks the divorce between the Ukrainian and American intelligence services, because if we [France] provides two-thirds of the information to Ukraine, I can well imagine that the last third is supplied by other European partners – in this case, Germany and the UK
When did this divorce take place? It happened on February 28, 2025, during the famous session in the Oval Office, which created a breach of trust between the Ukrainian and American intelligence services, to the point where the two heads of Ukrainian intelligence — so Vasyl Malyuk for the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] and Kyrylo Budanov … you can see them on the screen … for GUR [Main Directorate of Intelligence, military intelligence] — decided to stop sharing the effective information they had with their American partner because of American leaks to Moscow.
Rombout’s X post seems to get some details wrong. At no point did Crouzet say that Ukraine provided the US with false information and then traced that information to Russia. We’ve reached out to Rombout for his response to our findings about the possible translation error and will update this report if we hear back.
For further reading, Snopes examined a rumor spread by Russian hackers that 1.7 million Ukrainians died or disappeared during the war with Russia.
Sources:
“24h Calvi from Friday, January 16, 2026.” TF1 INFOTF1 Info, 16 Jan. 2026, www.tf1info.fr/replay-lci/videos/video-24h-calvi-du-vendredi-16-janvier-2026-2419200.html. Accessed 19 January 2026.
RFI. “France now supplies most of Ukraine’s intelligence, Macron says”. RFI16 Jan. 2026, www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260116-macron-says-france-is-providing-two-thirds-of-ukraine-s-intelligence-information. Accessed 19 January 2026.
Wrona, Aleksandra. “Russian hackers claim 1.7 million Ukrainians dead or missing in war. Here’s what we know.” SnopesSnopes.com, 25 Aug. 2025, www.snopes.com/news/2025/08/25/ukraine-russia-war-casualties/. Accessed 19 January 2026.