French prosecutors said Friday that foreign interference is behind a wave of apparently provocative acts — from stunts targeting Muslims to antisemitic graffiti — that have struck Paris in the last two years.
Pig heads were found outside nine mosques on Tuesday, shocking the Paris region. “Several of the pig heads had the inscription ‘MACRON’ written in blue ink,” the prosecutor’s office said earlier this week.
Prosecutors have not yet publicly named a state actor as being responsible for the various incidents, but the cases echo tactics previously attributed to Russian networks seeking to exploit social fractures in Europe.
Foreign interference is “something we must take into account, and that we do take into account, since in making an assessment of this type of acts that have taken place in the Paris area since October 2023, we have nine cases,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told BFMTV on Friday.
“It started with the blue Stars of David,” Beccuau said, referring to an incident that saw the symbols daubed on building walls in the French capitals’s 14th district in October 2023 — and was later linked to pro-Russian interference.
“Then came the ‘red hands,’ then splashes of green paint,” she said about attacks that targeted the Paris Holocaust memorial in 2024 and 2025.
Earlier this month, pro-Russian posters were discovered on several pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, showing the image of a soldier with the caption, “Say thank you to the victorious Soviet soldier.”
Beccuau said investigators have identified similar patterns in the modus operandi of individuals of Eastern European origin arriving for a short period of time in France to carry out these acts.
“Sometimes they take photos of what they have done, and send the photos beyond the borders to sponsors,” she said. “Some of the sponsors have been identified … so we are fully able to be convinced that these acts are operations of interference.”
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, French authorities have accused Moscow of spreading disinformation and orchestrating symbolic provocations designed to sow mistrust in institutions and deepen religious or political tensions.
Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report.
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