The Chief of Staff of the French army has resigned, protesting Macron’s decision to start a war against Russia, sovereigntist propaganda claims.
NEWS: He refused Macron’s order to get involved in the war against Russia. General Thierry Bukhard has resigned from his position as Chief of General Staff of the French Armed Forces. “I will not be complicit in this march towards chaos.”
Respect! General Thierry Burkhard resigns from his position as Chief of the General Staff of the French Armed Forces. It seems that he declared: “I am relinquishing command. Macron’s reckless strategy is leading us directly into a war. Refusing to face reality means betraying France. I will not be complicit in this march towards chaos”.
NARRATIVE: The Chief of Staff of the French army resigned, refusing to carry out President Macron’s order to start a war against Russia.
OBJECTIVES: To promote Russian propaganda against France. To undermine trust in the European Union and NATO. To stir or amplify anti-establishment tensions and social unrest.
How Russian propaganda presents the end of general’s mandate
WHY THIS NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In France, the Chief of the General Staff (Chef d’État-Major des Armées – CEMA) does not have a fixed mandate established by the Constitution or a specific law. The length of the mandate is decided by the President, as commander-in-chief, and the Defense Minister, and depends on the political and military context. However, there is an unwritten rule that a CEMA usually stays in office for about 4 years.
Therefore, General Thierry Burkhard (not Bukhard, as pro-Russian propagandists write) did not resign from his office, but simply reached the end of his mandate, which had even been extended by one year at the request of president Emmanuel Macron. Multiple and repeated web searches have offered absolutely no result to confirm that the French general ever uttered the words attributed to him — not in any context, nor even quoted by any third party.
In fact, contrary to propagandists’ claims, General Burkhard did not oppose any of president Macron’s decisions — quite the opposite. The French president extended Burkhard’s mandate precisely because, since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he supported all of Macron’s initiatives to supply Ukraine with weapons, vehicles, and provisions. Moreover, in March 2024, Burkhard referred to the possibility of France getting involved more deeply in Ukraine, including by providing weapons systems, training Ukrainian troops, launching cyberattacks on Russian positions, and conducting demining operations. This initiative by the French general, to which he invited several NATO member states to adhere, eventually led to the creation of the Coalition of the Willing (a name proposed by Burkhard himself) — a group of states (including Romania) working on security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of an cease-fire agreement with Russia.
In an interview to Politico at the end of last month, General Burkhard said that “Europe’s divided governments refuse to recognize the extent to which violence shapes global politics and must step up their efforts to impose their will”. He described a world defined by four political factors: the use of force to resolve conflicts, pressure from countries such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran designed to provoke the West, the power of information warfare, and the impact of climate change — thus showing a position in stark contrast with Russian propaganda narratives posing as sovereigntism.
Moreover, under Burkhard’s leadership, the French Armed Forces strengthened their presence on NATO’s Eastern Flank and became more active within the Alliance, while at the same time preparing for high-intensity warfare. As co-chair of the “Coalition of the Willing,” Burkhard spoke several times about military operations that could include troops in Ukraine, air patrols over the country, ensuring the resumption of maritime traffic in the Black Sea, and helping build Ukraine’s army. “To restore Ukrainians’ confidence, we must send the signal that European countries, possibly with some support from the United States, are ready to offer guarantees. Offering guarantees often means taking risks”, the former leader of the French army also said in the aforementioned interview.
In conclusion, Thierry Burkhard did not resign, but simply reached the end of his mandate, which had already been extended by one year, being one of the staunchest supporters of assistance to Ukraine and an outspoken opponent of Russia and its expansionist policy.
A “gentleman from Roșiorii de Vede,” a sovereigntist celebrity on social media
BACKGROUND: Russian propaganda attacks against France continue to multiply day by day, which has to do with Moscow’s perception of France as “its number one opponent in Europe”, according to Vladimir Putin himself. This explains why, in Romania, France has suddenly become labeled as a “colonizer” imposing its “imperialist” policies on Bucharest. Thus, several disinformation narratives and fake news items have been circulated in the public sphere, such as the claim that France has legalized pedophilia; that French mercenaries infiltrated the Romanian Gendarmerie to improve repression against supporters of former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu; or the narrative that France is the “source of all evil”, seeking to prolong the war in Ukraine and demanding the deployment of European troops to the front. A month ago, pro-Russian MEP Diana Șoșoacă promoted a gross piece of fake news claiming that U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged Romanians to start a revolution to free themselves from colonizing France. Things went even further during the presidential election campaign, when AUR leader George Simion accused president Emmanuel Macron of “dictatorial tendencies” live on French television. In fact, this entire arsenal of fake news and disinformation is used by Russian propaganda to target the destabilization of NATO’s defenses on its eastern flank. France is the country currently commanding NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group in Romania and, jointly with the United Kingdom, it co-chairs the “Coalition of the Willing for Ukraine.”
The videos in question were published on the Facebook account of one Ionel Sima, with just over 500 friends, who claims to be “born and bred” in Roșiorii de Vede, a town where he also pretends to ne working. The way he presents himself clearly indicates a false identity, in the already well-established style of propaganda networks funded by Russia as part of the hybrid war against Europe. The account was created in 2016, and for two years it had absolutely no activity. In February 2018, it shared a post from a group called “WERE YOU BORN ORTHODOX? STAY ORTHODOX!”, after which the account became inactive again for five (!!) years. Starting March 2023, when the “user” of the account also associated a face to his profile picture, the posts became increased in number, including dozens of AI-generated videos about “the beauties of the homeland,” “the beautiful life of the old days,” etc., shared on a regular basis. In 2024, the trend continued, and in the second half of the year, religious and political propaganda videos started getting published — initially for the SOS Romania party, then in favor of pro-Russian Călin Georgescu. Gradually, up until the present-day the videos posted by “Mr. Sima from Roșiori” have exclusively become tools for spreading Russian anti-Western propaganda, including images from Russia presenting the “wonderful life of the people there”, viewed and reshared hundreds of thousands of times. In a post from December 2024, “Mr. Sima” complained that his third TikTok account had been shut down, where he had over 22,000 followers and whose posts had received nearly 600,000 likes.
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