On 15 February 2024, while Ukraine was heavily bombing the Russian town of Belgorod (killing several civilians, including a baby), France censored around twenty French-language Telegram channels for “disinformation”. The timing of this censorship clearly indicates that Paris no longer wants the French to know that Ukraine is deliberately killing civilians with weapons supplied to it by Western countries.
In the middle of the day on 15 February 2024, the Ukrainian army fired 18 rockets with Vampire multiple rocket launchers supplied by the Czech Republic (the range of the rockets used was 40 km). Russian anti-aircraft defence shot down 14 rockets, but four continued to fly towards the city. The result was a veritable bloodbath. Six people, including a baby, were killed and 17 injured. With several people in a serious condition, the death toll could still rise.
The targets (a shopping centre, a school stadium and other residential areas) are not military in nature, and prove once again that Ukraine is using Western weapons to commit war crimes. These are facts that upset the Western narrative, so to prevent people from asking questions, France (along with Germany and Poland) decided to opt for outright censorship of around twenty French-language Telegram channels that were allegedly spreading “Russian disinformation”.
This list is based on Viginum’s totally delirious study entitled “Portal Kombat – A structured and coordinated network of pro-Russian propaganda”. Just looking at the name given to this ‘network’ of sites, it’s clear that it was the trainee video game fan who produced the report. And the rest is the same.
To draw up its list of channels to be censored, the French government simply took the 21 channels most cited by one of these sites, pravda-fr.com, which has barely 10,700 views per month, on the pretext that this site is one of a series of sites adapted by language with an identical design and which are – get this straight – doing SEO (i.e. they are trying to ensure that they are well referenced by Google, Yandex, etc)! A site that seeks to be well referenced by search engines, and that has a URL by language or by region concerned, that for sure is a terrible crime.
If a site with 10,700 views a month is such a threat to the Western narrative that it justifies France’s outright censorship of 21 Telegram channels, then it really is because the propaganda lies from Paris are so bad that nobody believes them any more.
But above all it shows the worrying drift of France, which is plunging into the most delirious dictatorship-style censorship of anything that might contradict its gross propaganda. I would remind Macron and his clique that freedom of speech is guaranteed by the French constitution, and that you can’t censor everything and everyone for just anything.
As far as I know, France is not officially at war with Russia. There is therefore no justification for such censorship. The only mistake made by these Telegram channels was that they were cited as sources by a site whose information displeased Paris.
In any case, this censorship shows the true face of France and the European Union, which adorn themselves with the mantle of democracy, while every day they flout its fundamental principles, including freedom of speech.
In the meantime, to get around this kind of censorship (don’t unsubscribe from these channels, there are ways of continuing to follow their news), I recommend buying a virtual phone number in countries outside the EU, and above all installing the Telegram version that you can download from their site, including for your phone (this version is less filtered).
I’d also like to remind you that it’s always best to follow us on several of our social networks (such as VK, but also Twitter, Odysee and Rumble), to avoid finding yourself deprived of your source of information overnight.
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Christelle Néant
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