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What’s happening: As the World Cup kicks off this week in North America, a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign is asserting that French soccer star Kylian Mbappé has publicly accused French President Emmanuel Macron of years of sexual harassment, in an apparent effort to discredit a staunch Ukraine ally.

Context: More than five million people are expected to attend World Cup matches in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and billions are expected to watch the broadcasts. Russia won’t be competing, as it was banned from the competition over its invasion of Ukraine.

A closer look: Days before the French national team headed for the tournament on June 10, pro-Kremlin X users shared a French-language video and article, which bore the logo of sports broadcaster Eurosport, claiming that Mbappé, the French team’s captain, accused Macron of sexually harassing him for years.

• The claim garnered 14 million views in English and French on X alone in just six days, according to a media monitoring tool used by NewsGuard. As of June 10, the posts were still active on the platform, and none of them included fact-checks by X’s AI tool, Grok. X’s press office did not respond to an emailed request for comment on whether the posts violate its policies, which state that users...

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