Did Ukraine run ‘sting operation’ providing false intelligence to US that was leaked to Russia? We inspected

On Jan. 15, 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron said France was now providing two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence. Shortly after, a rumor gained traction that Ukraine relied so heavily on French intelligence because Ukraine had allegedly given the U.S. false intelligence that the U.S. then leaked to Russia, uncovering the U.S. as an unreliable intelligence partner for Ukraine. 

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, starting a war that was ongoing in early 2026. 

The claim spread on X, Substack, Medium, Bluesky and Reddit. Several posts, including a Facebook post by a page named The Liberal Agenda (archived), featured a screenshot of an X post by user Luc Rombout. The screenshot read:

Interesting message on French newschannel LCI:
“Ukrainian intell services sent false strategic info to US intell services… and observed that the information had been relayed to RUS and was used by RUS forces.”
=> total replacement of US as Intell partner with FRA, GBR, DEU [France, the U.K., Germany]

“Trump is leaking intelligence about our allies to Russia,” the caption on the Facebook post said. 

Snopes could find no evidence confirming the rumor Ukraine had shared false information with the U.S. Instead, this claim appeared to stem from a misunderstanding of an interview that aired on Jan. 16, 2026, on the French news television channel LCI. 

The interview subject was Vincent Crouzet, who formerly worked at the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency. He said in the interview, without citing his sources, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected the U.S. had leaked information to Russia, causing Ukraine to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S.

Asked to clarify his assertion that the U.S. had leaked Ukrainian intelligence to Russia, Crouzet said in a Jan. 18 X post (archived), translated:

No, I did not say that: I said Ukrainians suspected risks of information leaks from the U.S. to the Russians.

Snopes contacted Crouzet to ask him what evidence he could provide that Ukrainians suspected intelligence leaks from the U.S. to Russia and whether there was any reason to believe Ukraine had fed the U.S. false information. We will update this report if we receive a response. 

Due to the fact that we could not verify or disprove these details independently, we did not give this report a rating.

The interview that sparked the rumor

The rumor spread, in part, via the screenshot of the X post by Rombout, who identified himself on his LinkedIn page as the head of a crisis management center in Belgium. 

Rombout’s post appeared to reshare a video clip posted on the 24H Pujadas account. 24H Pujadas is a program on LCI, considered reputable in France. 

The clip itself was genuine and not created or altered using artificial intelligence (AI) editing tools. Snopes identified an X post by the TV program 24H Pujadas with the video clip (archived) and a full video of the segment on the day it aired, Jan. 16, 2026. The presenter on that day was French journalist Yves Calvi.

Rombout seemingly deleted his original X post that made the claim. In a later post, he said in French that he was quoting the discussion in the French news program, implying that the claim did not originate with him.

A review of the televised interview showed Crouzet saying, in the context of discussing Macron’s speech announcing France was now providing two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, that two Ukrainian intelligence officials had decided to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S. due to a lack of trust (emphasis ours):

So this announcement went a bit under the radar, yet it is essential. It is essential in two ways. First because it marks the divorce between Ukrainian intelligence and U.S. intelligence, because if we [France] supply two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, I can well imagine that the last third is supplies by other European partners — in this case, Germany and the U.K.

When did this divorce happen? It happened on Feb. 28, 2025, during the famous session in the Oval Office, which created a break in the trust between Ukrainian intelligence and U.S. intelligence, 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 effective intelligence they had with their U.S. partner due to U.S. leaks to Moscow.

Rombout’s X post seemingly misinterpreted some details. At no point did Crouzet say Ukraine had fed the U.S. false information and then tracked that information to Russia. We reached out to Rombout for his response to our findings about the possible translation error, and we will 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 went missing during the war with Russia.