The case went all the way back to the Russian government. In a televised speech on Thursday, Vladimir Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov returned to the recent interventions, in the media and on Twitter, of the French reporter Anne-Laure Bonnel: “President Macron has spoken, said that zelensky should not be accused. And a French journalist replied. She, who went to Donbass, published her observations of the shelling of schools, the murders of two women who worked in that school, and called on Westerners to face the truth. She was not allowed to make this publication, but her comment is available on the Internet, so I invite you to read the facts.”
An allusion to a series of particularly crude tweets – one of which was deleted, because it contravened the rules of the platform – posted by this independent journalist and showing bodies lying in the streets of Donetsk, in the Donbass. This border region of Russia, in eastern Ukraine, is the scene of a war that has been going on since 2014 between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian authorities, which has become a pretext for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
But it was especially during her appearance, on March 1, in Pascal Praud’s show on CNews, that Anne-Laure Bonnel was particularly noticed. Speaking from Donbass, she vigorously denounced a conflict that “has lasted for eight years”: “This is something serious, which obviously escaped [the Europeans]: the Russian-speaking population of Donbass was targeted by its own government, was bombed by the Kiev government. […] Today, on the side where I am [separatist], the abuses are Ukrainian. […] On the Donbass side, near the front line, it is the Ukrainian army. […] The film I made in 2015 is proof of these crimes against humanity […].” Pascal Praud: “Donbass has been bombed by Ukrainian forces for years?” Anne-Laure Bonnel’s response: “13,000 dead since 2014.” Before showing photos of bodies, resulting, according to her, from the Ukrainian bombings of recent days.
Who is Anne-Laure Bonnel?
In her Twitter bio, Anne-Laure Bonnel, 40, presents herself as “Réal – Reporter – Photojournalist, without filter, without photoshop, without cropping”. She says she teaches at the Ecole supérieure de journalisme de Paris, the Université Paris-1 and the Institut national audiovisuel (INA). Last year, she directed a film about the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Silence in Nagorno-Karabakh. It was broadcast on Spicee, a documentary platform for which, according to her LinkedIn profile, she has been a reporter and consultant for seven years. Information denied by Spicee.
In 2020, she said she “refuses to be called a journalist”, since she had visited Donbass, because “extremely disappointed by the profession” and by “shame of the media coverage of this conflict”. She made remarks during a debate organised by Dialogue Franco-Russe – an association chaired by Thierry Mariani, a Russophile MEP and member of the National Rally – around her documentary, Donbass, released in 2016. This film, which she presents as a testimony to the daily life of the “Russian-speaking population” of this enclave in eastern Ukraine, contains no comments or reminder of the facts. She did this during three fifteen-day trips, in 2015, to different municipalities around Donetsk and Luhansk (the two “capitals” of the republics recognized as independent by Vladimir Putin on February 21, 2022, three days before the Russian offensive in Ukraine). Or in “separatist” territory.
She filmed the inhabitants crammed into cellars, the wounded hospitalized, the arrival of a Russian humanitarian convoy, improvised cemeteries… But didn’t go to the other side of the “contact line” to see what it was. “I initially wanted to film on both sides, but I couldn’t. In 2014, I made a request to Kiev to visit Donbass, but they had blocked access to the insurgent area for journalists. I then learned that I was inadmissible for ten years for filming on the other side,” she told CheckNews. A bias that is reproached to her by some colleagues, including Benoît Vitkine, correspondent of Le Monde in Moscow, who reports on Twitter that Anne-Laure Bonnel was accompanied throughout her film by members of separatist groups. “They were the ones we heard, in the film, asking questions of the witnesses, not the journalist. What were they saying? Horrific abuses by the Ukrainian army: pregnant woman beheaded, pensioners with severed ears, mass executions… False things, which have been dismantled many times, fables concocted by Russian TV and that Anne-Laure Bonnel’s guides magically put under her nose.”
His documentary was also presented at an event of the Russian House of Science and Culture in Paris, in an article in Methodius, “official journal of Franco-Russian Institutes”, which also covered his visit to the Donetsk National Technical University. Broadcast channels pointed out today by those who question its neutrality. “When my film came out, it didn’t resonate as I expected. It was first selected and then censored, there was a media blackout. So I had no choice but to turn to them to show it,” explains Anne-Laure Bonnel. In an interview with Buzz on Web in June 2021, she detailed: “Amnesty International has removed him from its catalogues after accompanying him to five cinemas.” Contacted, the human rights NGO is surprised by these accusations, and explains that its film had been presented during the month of March 2016 as part of the local festival “Cinema for Human Rights”, organized in the South region. “It is a local event free of its programming, it is normal that after the festival, the accompaniment stops. There has never been any question of a long-term partnership, neither she nor her doc are blacklisted at the national level, “says Ivan Guibert, head of the cultural actions department of the NGO. Jean-Luc Levénès, in charge of this festival, assures, for his part, that the collaboration had ended on good terms. “There were five screenings-debates planned and the contract was fulfilled, we had also got along very well.” Without contact with Anne-Laure Bonnel since 2016, Levénès recently unsubscribed from her Facebook page: “I do not agree with her political positioning, she has drifted. I maintain, however, that the docu was objective, of quality, hence the selection.”
Sur Twitter, les commentaires sur la reporter sont plus nombreux chaque jour depuis son passage sur CNews. L’engouement a d’abord été alimenté par la rumeur (fausse) que son compte avait été suspendu. Avant son retour récent dans le Donbass, son compte, bien actif, affichait des retweets de la marine nationale, de Valérie Boyer, d’Eric Ciotti, d’articles de Valeurs actuelles ou encore de publications antivax.
D’où vient le chiffre de 13 000 victimes ?
Si Anne-Laure Bonnel regrette que «personne ne parle» des 13 000 morts dans le conflit au Donbass, il s’agit en réalité d’un chiffre largement repris dans les articles écrits à ce sujet ces dernières années. Ce décompte tourne depuis 2019, date à laquelle il a été avancé pour la première fois par les Nations unies, comme l’avait alors rapporté Libération dans un article sur la situation au Donbass : «A ce jour, selon l’ONU, le conflit a fait plus de 13 000 morts confirmés, dont près de 3 300 civils.»
Une estimation reprise et précisée, depuis, par le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies aux droits de l’homme (HCDH). D’avril 2014 à février 2020, il y aurait ainsi eu, en tout, de 13 000 à 13 200 personnes tuées, d’après un rapport du HCDH. Sauf que ces 13 000 morts ne concernent pas que les seuls civils vivant dans la partie séparatiste. Toujours selon l’ONU, on dénombrerait ainsi «au moins 3 350 civils, environ 4 100 membres des forces ukrainiennes et environ 5 650 membres de groupes armés» pro-Russes. Idem pour les blessés : 29 000 à 31 000 individus auraient été blessés dans le conflit, dont «environ 7 000 à 9 000 civils, 9 500 à 10 500 membres des forces ukrainiennes et 12 500 à 13 500 membres de groupes armés».
Autrement dit, présenter ces 13 000 morts comme des civils qui se trouvaient tous du côté des séparatistes du Donbass, même si ce n’est que sous-entendu, est trompeur. Il apparaît même que la majorité d’entre eux (près de 10 000) étaient des combattants, de l’un et l’autre des camps en présence.
Peut-on également, comme le HCDH le fait pour les forces et groupes armés, déterminer à quelle partie – progouvernement ou pro-indépendance – appartenaient les civils tués ? Les travaux de la mission d’observation de l’Organisation pour la sécurité et la coopération en Europe (OSCE) en Ukraine fournissent quelques éléments de réponse, en distinguant les victimes civiles en fonction de la région où elles ont péri. D’après deux rapports portant l’un sur l’année 2016, l’autre sur la période du 1er janvier 2017 au 15 septembre 2020, 249 décès de civils ont été à déplorer entre 2016 et l’automne 2020. Parmi eux, 83 résidaient dans des territoires sous l’égide du gouvernement ukrainien, 154 vivaient dans les régions du Donbass contrôlées par les séparatistes, et 12 se trouvaient dans une zone sous contrôle d’aucune des parties.
En réalité, de nombreux civils des deux parties se sont retrouvés pris entre deux feux. Telle qu’elle existait ces dernières années, la ligne de front traversait «un territoire de moins en moins habité mais qui est, à l’origine, urbanisé», pointe Anna Colin Lebedev, enseignante-chercheuse en science politiques à l’Université Paris Nanterre et spécialiste des sociétés postsoviétiques. «La ligne de contact passait très souvent soit juste à proximité de villages, soit directement au milieu des villages. S’agissant de Donetsk, elle s’étalait même sur une bonne partie de la ville», ajoute Karine Ardault, présente dans la zone de 2015 à 2018 en tant qu’observatrice pour l’OSCE. «Pendant tout ce temps, on avait donc des civils qui vivaient sur la ligne de contact, ne pouvaient pas forcément partir – pour raisons de santé ou économiques notamment –, et qui se sont retrouvés quelques fois entre les positions militaires de chaque partie», souligne cette juriste spécialisée en conflits armés.
Au-delà du chiffre, qu’il est donc important de détailler et de replacer dans son contexte, les expertes jointes par CheckNews déplorent les termes employés par Anne-Laure Bonnel lorsque celle-ci avance que «la population russophone du Donbass a été […] bombardée par le gouvernement de Kiev» ou que «côté russophone, encore aujourd’hui, ça bombarde». «De part et d’autre de ce qu’on appelle la ligne de contact, la population était russophone. Les russophones ne se trouvaient donc pas seulement dans les deux républiques [de Donetsk et Louhansk, ndlr]», rappelle Karine Ardault.
Cette présentation biaisée n’enlève rien au fait que des exactions ont pu être commises par les deux camps. Concernant le terme de «crimes contre l’humanité» employé par Anne-Laure Bonnel pour désigner ces 13 000 décès, la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) vient d’ailleurs d’ouvrir une enquête, visant notamment à déterminer si certains des faits commis en Ukraine depuis 2014 pourraient être qualifiés comme tels. Dans un rapport de la CPI rendu en 2020, sont mentionnées diverses exactions – tortures, exécutions sommaires –, mais qui sont attribuées, là aussi, tant au camp russe qu’ukrainien. Concernant des meurtres de civils, enfin, le rapport insiste sur «l’usage répété d’armements militaires lourds par les deux camps».
Pourquoi ces propos collent-ils avec l’argumentaire des autorités russes ?
Cette vision très unilatérale de la situation dans le Donbass, véhiculée par Anne-Laure Bonnel, est aussi celle des autorités russes et de leurs soutiens. Dans un article publié dans la foulée de son passage sur CNews, le média pro-russe Sputnik explique ainsi que «les chiffres avancés par Anne-Laure Bonnel semblent concorder avec ceux de Moscou, qui a déclaré, ce 28 février, que 14 000 personnes ont péri dans le Donbass suite aux actions militaires de Kiev». Une utilisation détournée des chiffres, qui a servi de justification à l’intervention de Moscou en Ukraine.
«Les actions militaires du régime de Kiev et l’extermination systématique des habitants du Donbass ont duré huit ans. Au cours de cette guerre, plus de 14 000 personnes, dont des centaines d’enfants, sont mortes», a ainsi déclaré, le 28 février, le porte-parole du ministère russe de la Défense, Igor Konaсhenkov, comme le rappelle Sputnik dans un précédent article.
These remarks are in line with those of Vladimir Putin who, in his televised address on the day of the invasion, February 24, described these deaths as “genocide”: “For eight years, endless years, we have done everything possible to ensure that the situation is resolved by peaceful and political means [in donbass]. In vain. As I said in my previous speech, you cannot look without compassion at what is happening there. It was simply no longer possible to stand idly by. This nightmare – a genocide against the millions of people who live there and who base their hopes only on Russia – had to be brought to an end without delay. It is precisely this desire, these feelings, the pain of the people that was for us the main reason for taking the decision to recognize the people’s republics of Donbass.”
What is happening today in Donbass?
On CNews, Anne-Laure Bonnel indicates that “in the Donbass region, on the Russian-speaking side, even today, it bombs”. “The Russians are at the heart of the country (sic). On the Donbass side, near the front line, it is the Ukrainian army,” she insists.
In a photo published on social networks, Anne-Laure Bonnel appears, cigarette in hand, next to the inert bodies of two people, accompanied by the following caption: “[…] Donetsk. Ukrainian strike. 1 March 3.30 p.m. approximately.”; This image was taken in front of a building whose location corresponds to that of an attack reported by the Russian news agency Tass on the same day. According to Tass, a bombing “by several rocket launchers” of Ukraine in Donetsk actually caused the death of two civilians on March 1. Other images and a video that may correspond to this attack have circulated on social networks, without being able to determine the origin and the precise context.
The Russian agency, for its part, relies on a statement by the head of the Donetsk administration. On his Telegram account, the official deplores “massive bombings” from Ukrainians in various places in the city that day. He shared, throughout the day, information and photos showing damage, and each time pointing to the Ukrainian army as responsible. CheckNews has not been able to verify these accusations.
Anyway, this region, like many in Ukraine today, is at war. In donetsk oblast (region), clashes are also taking place west of the line of contact for control of the city of Horlivka. But despite intense military activity, the front line inherited from the 2014 war has changed little. Russian and separatist forces have mainly advanced southwards, as far as Mariupol to make the junction with the troops from Crimea. This port city of about 450,000 inhabitants is now surrounded, even if the Ukrainian General Staff denies the seizure by the Russians. In Luhansk Oblast, Russian troops are advancing northwestward. They reached the cities of Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk and Starobilsk.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/liberation/7ACIJATRFZASZJ3UGBBLLIUHSE.png "Qui est la journaliste française Anne-Laure Bonnel, censurée, selon Moscou, pour son travail sur le Donbass? – Libération 1")
More than any other period, that of wars is subject to disinformation, whether from unknown sources or official authorities. In the context of the crisis in Ukraine, Libération’s CheckNews service remains fully mobilized to answer your questions and try to disentangle the true from the false, whether statements, images or videos. Information makes you doubt? Do not hesitate to contact us via our form, by clicking on the banner at the top of each article. Updated on 03/03/2022 at 8:25 pm: Added Spicee’s denial regarding Anne-Laure Bonnel’s position.
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