Photo: Ludovic Marin / Pool / EPA-EFE
A video of European leaders shot by the Associated Press on a train from Kyiv went viral on Sunday amid allegations that it features a “drug parcel” and “cocaine spoon”, accusations that the French government has denounced as “fake news”.
In the footage, a low-quality version of which is being circulated by numerous pro-Russian accounts and conspiracy theorists, French President Emmanuel Macron appears to pocket a white item, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz shifts an oblong object off the table as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer moves to take his seat.
In a post which has been viewed over 20 million times as of Monday morning, American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused the European leaders of looking “completely cracked out”, noting that they had just been hosted by a “known cocaine enthusiast”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Jones’ claim echoed Russian propagandists and officials, including former Russian president and close Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev, who had previously labelled Zelensky “an illegitimate drug addict”, and was quickly picked up by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who said on her Telegram channel on Sunday: “It is as if the Almighty Himself had opened the veil of this stinking coven to the world”.
“Having pushed Zelensky into a hellish plot to disrupt peace and continue bloodshed in Europe, like the joke goes, a Frenchman, an Englishman and a German got onto a train and … got high. Apparently, so much so that they forgot to remove the paraphernalia (bag and spoon) before the journalists arrived,” Zakharova continued.
Kirill Dmitriev, a top Putin envoy and a member of the Russian delegation to the talks with Washington this spring, wrote on X: “Is this footage AI or real? If it’s real — are we looking at sugar or something entirely different? If it’s something else, it explains a lot of recent ideas and proposals.”
However, according to a piece in French newspaper Libération, a higher-quality photo shows that the “drug parcel” is actually a paper handkerchief, while the “cocaine spoon” looks more like a toothpick. Social media users have additionally commented that the item moved by Merz resembles a wooden skewer with a knot at the end.
Responding to the claims on social media, the Élysée Palace labelled those who spread the theory that European leaders were using drugs on the way to Kyiv “France’s enemies”.
“When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs … We must remain vigilant against manipulation,” the French presidential administration said.
Macron, Merz, Starmer, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had paid a visit to Kyiv on 10 May, prior to appearing in the video. The politicians held talks with Zelensky, after which they proposed a full and unconditional land, air, and sea ceasefire for at least 30 days, starting as early as Monday.