The installation of coffins in the Eiffel Tower fuels suspicions of foreign interference

Suspicions of a campaign of foreign interference have been revived in France after five coffins filled with plaster and covered with the French flag appeared on Saturday at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. “French soldiers from Ukraine,” read one inscription. The action is reminiscent of the graffiti of red hands that appeared Shoah Memorial in mid-May and the Stars of David in several areas of Paris at the end of October 2023. In all three cases, suspicions point, according to several French media, to a destabilization operation originating in Russia.

The method is similar in all three cases, and is actually not new. In the 1950s, and in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet Union already used it to sow confusion in the society of a country considered an enemy, then West Germany, with anti-Semitic graffiti. The coffins at the foot of the Eiffel Tower arrive a few days after the possible sending of French military instructors to Ukraine reopened the debate, promoted by President Emmanuel Macron, on a possible deployment of Western troops to help Ukrainians in the face of Russian aggression .

The events, in the most recent episode, happened on June 1 at 8:30. A van with Bulgarian license plates parked on the corner of Avenue Jean Paulhan and Quai Jacques Chirac, near the Eiffel Tower, according to the newspaper. Le Parisian. The vehicle was transporting the coffins, which two other men were responsible for installing. Video surveillance cameras recorded part of the operation

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office identified the driver in a statement as a Bulgarian citizen born in 1985. The other two are a German born in 1999 and a Ukrainian born in 2007 and a minor. The three acknowledged having received money for the mission: the first, 120 euros, according to Le Parisian; the other two, 400. For now, it has not been identified who commissioned them with the mission and paid for it.

The German and the Ukrainian were detained at a Paris bus station when they were about to leave for Berlin. The Bulgarian was also brought to justice. The three have been released as “assisted testimonies”, an intermediary figure between the simple testimony and the accused.

There is a link between the coffins and the red-painted hands that appeared on the morning of May 14 on the Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah Monument in Paris, and other points in the city, according to an internal note from the Directorate of Paris Agglomeration Proximity Security (DSPAP) cited by Le Monde. Investigators, based on this information, believe that the three detainees were in contact with a 34-year-old Bulgarian who participated in the red hands operation.

Red hands are a symbol that has been seen in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at French universities and has sparked debate about its possible anti-Semitic message. That operation sowed confusion. At first, political leaders and commentators associated it with the increase in anti-Semitic acts that have been recorded in France since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israeli attack on Gaza. A few days later, the weekly Le Canard Enchaîné revealed that the authors of the graffiti were three individuals who had stayed in a hotel in Paris, which had been booked from Bulgaria, and who after committing the act had boarded a bus heading to Brussels.

He modus operandi It is reminiscent of the group that last fall, a few weeks after October 7 and the start of the war in Gaza, painted stars of David on buildings in various areas of Paris, and provoked outrage for its supposed anti-Semitic nature. The French intelligence services, according to Le Mondepoint to the FSB, the Russian intelligence services, as responsible for the star operation, although the Prosecutor’s Office has not made its conclusions public.

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