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After French President Emmanuel Macron said that France was now providing two-thirds of all intelligence to Ukraine on January 15, 2026, a rumor gained traction that this was because Ukraine had given false intelligence to the United States, which the United States then leaked to Russia, revealing the United States as an unreliable intelligence partner for Ukraine.
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Snopes could find no evidence to confirm the rumor that Ukraine had shared false information with the U.S. Instead, this part of the claim came from an apparent misunderstanding of a January 16, 2026, interview on a French news television station.
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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 that the United States had leaked information to Russia, prompting Ukraine to stop sharing intelligence with the United States In X. place 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 about his evidence for these alleged leaks and whether there was any indication that they involved Ukraine intentionally feeding the United States false information. We’ll update this story if we learn more.
On 15 January 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron said that France is now providing two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence. Soon after, a rumor gained traction that Ukraine relied so much on French intelligence because Ukraine had allegedly given the United States false intelligence that the United States then leaked to Russia, exposing the United States as an unreliable intelligence partner for Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, starting an ongoing war in early 2026.
The claim spread across X, Substack, Medium, Bluesky and Reddit. Several posts, including a Facebook post from a page called The Liberal Agenda (archived), featured a screenshot of post X by user Luc Rombout. The screenshot reads:
Interesting message on the French news channel LCI:
“Ukrainian intelligence services sent false strategic information to US intelligence services… and observed that the information had been transmitted to RUS and used by RUS forces.”
=> total replacement of USA as Intell partner with FRA, GBR, DEU [France, the U.K., Germany]
“Trump is leaking classified information about our allies to Russia,” said the headline on the Facebook post.
Snopes could find no evidence to confirm the rumor that Ukraine had shared false information with the U.S. Instead, this claim appeared to stem from a misunderstanding of an interview that aired on January 16, 2026, on the French news channel 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 mentioning his sources, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected that the United States had leaked information to Russia, and this caused Ukraine to stop sharing intelligence with the United States.
Asked to clarify his assertion that the United States had leaked Ukrainian intelligence to Russia, Crouzet said in a Jan. 18 (archived) X post, translated:
No, you didn’t say that: you said that the Ukrainians were suspected risks of leaking information from the United States to the Russians.
Snopes contacted Crouzet to ask him what evidence he could provide that the Ukrainians suspected intelligence leaks from the United States to Russia and whether there was any reason to believe that Ukraine provided false information to the United States. We will update this report if we receive a response.
Due to the fact that we could not independently verify or deny these details, we have not given a rating to this report.
The interview that raised the rumor
The rumor was spread, in part, through the screenshot of post X by Rombout, who identified himself on his LinkedIn page as the head of a crisis management center iin Belgium.
Rombout’s post appeared to reshare a video clip uploaded to the 24H Pujadas account. 24H Pujadas is a program about LCI, considered famous in France.
The clip itself was genuine and not created or altered using artificial intelligence (AI) editing tools. Snopes identified X post from the television program 24H Pujadas with the video clip (archived) and full video of the segment the day it was broadcast, 16 January 2026. The presenter that day was the French journalist Yves Calvi.
Rombout seems to have deleted his original X post that made the claim. In a later post, he said in French that he was quoting the discussion on the French news program, implying that the claim did not originate with him.
A review of the television interview showed Crouzet saying, in the context of discussing Macron’s speech announcing that France was now providing two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, that two Ukrainian intelligence officers had decided to stop sharing intelligence with the United States due to a lack of trust (our emphasis):
So this news has gone a little under the radar, but it’s essential. It is essential in two ways. First because it marks the divorce between Ukrainian intelligence and US intelligence, because if we [France] provide two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, I can well imagine that the last third is supplied by other European partners — in this case, Germany and the United Kingdom
When did this divorce take place? This happened on February 28, 2025, during the famous session in the Oval Office, which created a break in trust between the intelligence of Ukraine and the intelligence of the United States, 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 the GUR [Main Directorate of Intelligence, military intelligence] — decided to no longer share the effective intelligence they had with their American partner because of US leaks to Moscow.
Rombout’s X post seems to have misinterpreted some details. At no point did Crouzet say that Ukraine had given the United States false information 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 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 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 Much 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.