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After French President Emmanuel Macron said on January 15, 2026 that France had now provided Ukraine with two-thirds of its intelligence, a rumor gained traction that this was because Ukraine had given the US false intelligence, which the US then leaked to Russia, exposing the US as an unreliable intelligence partner for the US.
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Snopes could find no evidence to confirm the rumor that Ukraine had shared false information with the US.
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In that interview, Vincent Crouzet, a former intelligence officer at France’s foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), said, without citing a source, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected the US of leaking information to Russia, causing Ukraine to stop sharing intelligence with the US. Post Two days later, Crouzet appeared to deny claims that those leaks contained deliberately false information.
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We’ve reached out to Crouzet to ask him about his evidence for these alleged leaks and whether there is any indication that Ukraine is intentionally feeding the US false information. We’ll update this story if we learn more.
On January 15, 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron said that France now provided two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence. Shortly after, a rumor gained traction that Ukraine relied so heavily on French intelligence because Ukraine had allegedly given false intelligence to the US that the US had leaked to Russia, exposing the US as an unreliable intelligence partner for Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, beginning an ongoing war in early 2026.
Claims spread to X, Substack, Medium, Bluesky and Reddit. Several posts, including a Facebook post by a page called The Liberal Agenda (archived), featured a screenshot of user Luc Rombout’s X post. The screenshot read:
Interesting message on French news channel LCI:
“Ukrainian intelligence services sent false strategic information to US intelligence services … and observed that this information was relayed to RUS and used by RUS forces.”
=> Total replacement of US as Intell partner with FRA, GBR, DEU [France, the U.K., Germany]
“Trump is leaking intelligence about our allies to Russia,” the caption on the Facebook post read.
Snopes could find no evidence to confirm the rumor that Ukraine had shared false information with the U.S. Instead, the claim appeared to stem from a misunderstanding of an interview that aired on French news television channel LCI on January 16, 2026.
The subject of the interview was Vincent Crouzet, who previously worked at France’s foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE). He said in the interview, without citing his sources, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected the U.S. of leaking information to Russia, causing Ukraine to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S.
Asked to clarify his claim that the U.S. leaked Ukrainian intelligence to Russia, Crouzet said in a Jan. 18 X post (archived), translated:
No, I didn’t say that: I said that the Ukrainians suspected the risk of leaking information from the US to the Russians.
Snopes contacted Crouzet to ask what evidence he could provide that he suspected the Ukrainians of leaking intelligence from the U.S. to Russia and whether there was any reason to believe Ukraine was feeding the U.S. false information. We will update this report if we receive feedback.
Due to the fact that we cannot independently verify or refute these details, we have not rated this report.
The interview that caused the buzz
The rumor spread, in part, through a screenshot of an X post by Rombout, who identified himself on his LinkedIn page as the head of the Crisis Management Center.n Belgium.
Rombout’s post appeared to re-share a video clip posted on the 24H Pujadas account. 24H Pujadas is a program at LCI, considered prestigious in France.
The clip itself was real and was not created or altered using artificial intelligence (AI) editing tools. Video clip by Snopes TV program 24H Pujadas (archived) and A Full video of the episode The day it aired, January 16, 2026. The presenter that day was French journalist Yves Calvi.
Rombout appears to have deleted his original X post as claimed. In a later post, he said in French that he was citing a discussion on a French news program, indicating that the claim did not originate with him.
In a review of television interviews, Crouzet found that two Ukrainian intelligence officials had decided to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S. due to a lack of trust in the context of Macron’s speech announcing that France provided two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence (emphasis ours):
So this announcement went a little under the radar, but it’s necessary. This is necessary in two ways. First because it marks a divorce between Ukrainian intelligence and American intelligence, because if we [France] Two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence supply, I can well imagine that the last third is supplied by other European partners – in this case, Germany and Britain
When did this divorce happen? This happened on February 28, 2025, during the famous session in the Oval Office, which created a breach of trust between Ukrainian intelligence and American intelligence. To the point where the two leaders 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 not to effectively share intelligence with their American partner due to US leaks in Moscow.
Rombout’s X post appears to have misinterpreted some details. At no point did Crouzet say that Ukraine fed false information to the U.S. and then tracked that information to Russia. We’ve reached out to Rombout for his response to our findings about the possible translation error, and we’ll update this report if we receive a response.
For further reading, Snopes examines 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 informationTF1 Info, 16 January 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 January 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 1.7M 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.
