MOSCOW (Sputnik) — People in France does not believe that Kiev-led forces have infringed on the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, because mainstream media chooses not to show this side of events to the public, former Minister of Transport Thierry Mariani told Sputnik France.
Earlier this month, the French television channel Canal + aired a program in which an adviser to French President Francois Hollande mentioned violations of the truce committed by the Ukrainian troops. The channel subsequently cut the footage.
"This is because it is not the official truth," Mariani answered, when asked why such an issue would go unnoticed in France.
"Everyone knows for the majority of the French media there is a good side and a bad side, and, of course, Ukrainians are systematically the victims, they never break the ceasefire, it is obviously done by the Luhansk and Donetsk republics," Mariani said, describing the editorial line taken by the French media in covering the events in Ukraine.
The warring sides signed a deal in Minsk to regulate the crisis in February. The deal stipulated a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weaponry and prisoner swaps, among other provisions. Both sides have traded blame for numerous violations of the deal.
Since the Ukrainian crisis escalated, Western media has adopted a one-sided approach in its coverage of events there.
An ICM poll, published in April, revealed that some 54 percent of respondents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Greece said they did not trust mainstream media when it came to coverage of the Ukrainian crisis.
