French President Emmanuel Macron is planning a visit to Ukraine in mid-March, his entourage said tonight, while Russian social networks spread rumors about an alleged planned attack on Macron during the visit.
"There were never security questions in the schedule of Macron's visit. That question was never even raised," a source close to Macron's entourage told France Press.
According to a video attributed to France 24 television, which was broadcast on Russian networks, but was declared "disinformation" by French television, Macron canceled his trip to Ukraine after allegedly "French secret services" discovered an "assassination plan" against him.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now number two in Russia's Security Council, joked about the visit that Emmanuel Macron first announced for February and then for mid-March.
"It appears that Macron was so frightened by a real or perceived assassination plot that he canceled his trip," Medvedev said in a rare and direct accusation against a Western leader.
On Friday, Macron announced in front of his Ukrainian colleague Volodymyr Zelensky, who came to sign the bilateral security agreement in Paris, that he would visit Ukraine in mid-March. Macron spoke about that trip earlier in January, and then he mentioned February as the time of the visit.
The French president then condemned Russia's "change in behavior" towards Europeans and called for a collective response to that change.
Macron condemned the strengthening of disinformation and hacker attacks.
Relations have been particularly strained between Paris and Moscow since January, due to Russian accusations of Paris' increasing "involvement" in the conflict in Ukraine, and the death of two French aid workers in a Russian attack in southern Ukraine.
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