As I launch my personal and privileged space, L’Aurore Nouvelle, this article is symbolic. It was written by my pen upon my return from Donetsk, in May 2015. The war had already been going on for a good year, and already in the West, in France, the media were not doing their job; worse, they were aiding disinformation. Shocked by what I had seen in Donetsk, where I was taken immediately to the front, a kind of anger filled me. It was then that I wrote this article, a cry of indignation. It was my flagship article at the time, published in several languages; it in some ways launched my struggle, begun however since 2012, to re-inform about Russia and since the autumn of 2014, when I decided to write my first book, Ukraine: The Kingdom of Disinformation. I never could have believed that twelve years later, this war would continue; I never could have imagined the consequences on my modest existence. Here is that cry I launched in the spring of 2015. It is the same in 2026.
May 2015, three days to change a life. I had the colossal chance to go to the Donbass and to Donetsk for several days, thus fulfilling a duty that would have been that of our government in normal times. With very limited means, with the extraordinary support of a few personalities from Donetsk (and elsewhere), I was able to come and see with my own eyes what is happening in this region of Europe, which everyone talks about, but which almost no French person could place on a map. I traveled several thousand kilometers to get there and now I can accuse the French government, more strongly, more justly. To say nothing would be a crime; to say nothing would be to dishonor my name as a Frenchman.
I accuse you, government of France, I accuse you, through your indirect support, of being responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the Donbass, of favoring the blockade and the deplorable living conditions of the population. I accuse you of participating in a deceitful, unjust, dirty, and scandalous propaganda of which millions of people are victims. I accuse you of having betrayed all French traditions stemming from the Revolution and even from the Ancien Régime, aimed at supporting the weak, defending them, liberating them from oppression, in the manner of the thousands of national volunteers of Year II who marched against all of Europe to seize their freedom and that of other peoples.
I accuse you, government of France, of having abandoned your sovereignty, leaving it in a gutter called the European Union. I accuse you of no longer using the rights and duties of “The French Voice” which order our leaders to use our diplomacy and the impact of our aura in the world to do good, in complete independence and outside foreign spheres of influence contrary to the interest of the Nation. I accuse you, government of France, of lying to the French people, through a criminal mass propaganda that for many months has consisted of undermining, attacking, and smearing Russia by all means at its disposal. This dangerous Russophobic policy, bordering on racism and nationalism, is so frightening for our country that we refused to march alongside our Russian brothers for the Victory of May 9th, victory over Nazism. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, we support a regime relying on a neo-Nazi fringe; we have paid several billion euros through the European Union with French taxes, money used to arm and equip soldiers of battalions of murderers and rapists such as those of Azov# and Aidar#.
I accuse you, government of France, along with almost all the journalists of our country, of participating in a dramatic lie from which people are dying in the Donbass: the myth of the Russian army having attacked Ukraine. I went to the Donbass; I entered it through two different border crossings, at Novoshakhtinsk and Matveev Kurgan. If there were the 50,000 Russian soldiers announced by pro-Ukraine activists who now have blood on their hands indirectly, like the infamous Nathalie Pasternak, if there were several divisions, I would necessarily have seen hundreds of tanks, trucks, support forces, logistics, etc. I saw no Russian military forces massed at the border, and it is difficult to hide so many men or troops in a country where the Cossack steppe is the dominant feature of the landscape and the terrain’s specificity. I did not see during my entire trip, neither Russian soldier, nor regiment, nor brigade, nor division, nor army of the Russian Federation. Everywhere I went, in the cities I passed through, such as, for example, the Cossack city of Antratsyt, a small town of 54,000 inhabitants south of Luhansk, I did not see Russian military forces. I was able to question all the residents I could meet, all the people present here, even those opposed to the project of Novorossiya (because I met some), they all stated that there was no Russian army in the Donbass. I was able to verify it myself throughout my stay and I only discovered the republican soldiers of the forces of the two republics, dressed and armed in a very heterogeneous manner.
For the record. I will tell at another time what I saw and heard in the Donbass. It would have sufficed for the French government to send a single diplomat, a single observer to observe, verify, and make an objective report to our Minister of Foreign Affairs and through him to our President of the Republic. Our French government did not do so; on the contrary, it persists in charging Russia. What I saw in the Donbass were ordinary people, young, not so young, women and men, children and the elderly. It is a Russian-speaking population that desires only its freedom. It already chose independence through a referendum. It has already raised the flag of freedom in Donetsk and Luhansk. This population is supported, and still relatively, by Russia, which has taken in 1.7 million refugees without any external aid, without France, the country of human rights, paying a single cent to help all these people in distress. On the contrary, it is Russia that has been pointed at, unjustly sanctioned. It is the population of the Donbass that suffers and dies. Without the incredible solidarity of the people of the Donbass or Russia, thousands of them would already be dead, but others will die, soldiers or civilians. And this because they want to be free, they want to be masters of their destinies, they want to live.
I therefore call, in my own name alone and whatever it may cost me, even oppression and prison, upon all French people, of whatever origin, without distinction of skin color, political orientation, to sanction the French government by all possible means of resistance, electoral or not, by practicing passive resistance, by rising up, by ceasing to live on their knees. The populations of the Donbass show us the example; we can overthrow this iniquitous presidential regime, of gorged and self-satisfied oligarchs. We can peacefully push them out of our walls; the force of the People, as Danton said, is limitless; it would only take a spark for France to relearn its popular strength, to reclaim democracy so that never again are lies and falsifications of history supported by France, especially when people are dying under bombs, assassinated, and even for lack of medical care or food. For me, my decision is made. Like the French ambassador in Prague in 1939 who requested Czech nationality as the German divisions forced the border, I request the nationality of the Donbass. I prefer to share the fate of brave people than to remain silent and tacitly follow policies that dishonor their offices and through them, France, with each passing day.
