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French intelligence is “taking seriously” the idea that Russia has fanned panic over its bedbug outbreak.
Reported outbreaks of bedbugs infesting homes and migrating to metros and cinemas have filled the headlines in France.
Bedbugs are only 3mm long.
Algeria announced in early October that it would introduce “preventative measures” to ward off the spread of bedbugs to their country from France on planes and ships.
A test tube full of bed bugs was even brought into the French parliament by an MP raising concern about the “wave of panic that has seized the country”.
The government staged an emergency meeting earlier this month and Clément Beaune, the transport minister, pledged to send sniffer dogs into trains to check for their presence.
While experts say global warming and the revival of international travel and tourism in the wake of COVID lockdowns has caused an uptick in the bloodsucking insects, others suggest the current national debate is disproportionate and the outbreak is not significant.
Against this backdrop, French intelligence agents cited by RMC radio say they strongly suspect Russia of seeking to amplify fears by spreading so-called “doppelganger” articles on social media that appear to come from respected French news outlets but are faked.
Agence France Presse’s fact-checking body identified two such articles.
The first – supposedly published by La Montagne, a regional newspaper – claimed that effective insecticides used to kill the pests have fallen foul of an embargo on Russian chemicals. The article was translated into various languages.
La Montagne told AFP Factuel that they had never published such an article, denouncing it as a “forgery”.
AFP Factuel, meanwhile, pointed out that bedbugs have been present in France long before “heavy international sanctions were taken against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022″.
In another instance, a fake article purporting to have been written by Left-leaning national newspaper Libération and relayed by a Telegram account linked to Kremlin-owned news outlet Russia Today claimed that Ukrainian refugees were to blame for the surge in bedbugs.
A similar fake piece was attributed to Le Figaro, the conservative daily.
This spring, Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister, denounced such “doppelganger” articles – often anti-Ukrainian – churned out by Russian troll factories as “unworthy of a country with a UN security council seat”.
Some 355 outlets had been “cloned” in this way and the foreign ministry’s own website was also targeted.
While Russia may have stoked fears, RMC added that French intelligence did not see it as having initiated the panic. Rather it “rode the wave” as part of its “hybrid war” on the West.
Mathilde Panot, the leftist MP and parliamentary leader of the France Unbowed party, this month said she alerted authorities in 2017 that there were 200,000 locations infested. The figure rose to 500,000 by 2019 and 1.2 million by 2022, she said.
But speaking to The Telegraph, handlers of two sniffer dogs trained to pinpoint bedbugs via their smell said there had been no “explosion” in cases in Paris.
“Frankly no. We’ve been in the business for more than a decade and we’ve always been called to hotels, schools and cinemas,” said Aldo Massaglia who co-runs the Doggybug anti-pest company.
“People need to calm down or they’ll end up putting us back in lockdown at this rate! It’s as if someone was seeking to damage the reputation of the country before the Olympics,” he said.
However, business was booming – up almost 50 per cent following all the media alerts.
Telegraph, London
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