Soup 391, June 6, 2026
| Soup | 391 |
|---|---|
| Permalink | Permalink |
| Date | 2026-06-06 |
| Twitter/X | Read |
| Twitter/X Quotes | View |
| Twitter/X Latest Comments | View |
| Twitter/X Thread | Thread |
| Thread Reader App | Read |
| Thread Reader PDF | Read |
| Bluesky | Read |
| Bluesky Quotes | View |
| Read Bluesky Thread | Read |
| Bluesky Skyview | Read |
| Bluesky Skywriter | Read |
| Bluesky ThreadSky | Read |
| Posts | 25 |
| Soup type | Vatnik profile |
|---|---|
| Profession | Media tycoon |
| Country of origin | France |
| Born | 1952-04-01 (74 years old) |
| Retweets | 148 |
| Likes | 302 |
| Views | 8.1k |
| Bookmarks | 27 |
| In other languages | |
| Related soups: |
Vincent Bolloré
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Vincent Bolloré, a French billionaire and media tycoon. He’s best known for building a powerful media empire and for reshaping editorial lines across French media and publishing, pushing them toward far-right and pro-Kremlin positions.
Born in 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt to a family of industrialists, Vincent studied law at Paris Nanterre University. He took over the family business and turned it into a sprawling conglomerate spanning logistics, port infrastructure in Africa, advertising, and media.
Bolloré’s African logistics empire also became the subject of a long-running corruption investigation in France. Legal proceedings against Vincent Bolloré personally are still ongoing, with a trial planned in December, after a judge refused to approve a plea deal.
His holdings grew through aggressive acquisitions and tight managerial control. Bolloré gradually took control of Vivendi, giving him influence over major channels and outlets including Canal+, CNews, Europe 1, and publisher Editis. His net worth is now around €9.5 billion.
The expansion of his media empire did not go unopposed. Over 600 French film industry figures, joined by international stars from Juliette Binoche to Javier Bardem, have now signed an open letter warning against Bolloré’s growing control over French media and cinema through Canal+ and StudioCanal.
Bolloré’s influence also expanded into radio with Europe 1, where editorial direction and staffing were overhauled. Another major backlash occurred at Éditions Grasset, where over 200 authors walked away or refused future publications after leadership changes by Bolloré.
Bolloré’s TV channel C8 was the subject of repeated controversies and regulatory sanctions. The channel was fined €3.5 million and ordered to comply with rules on editorial independence when a guest was insulted by the presenter and prevented from criticizing Bolloré.
Journalists and insiders have repeatedly accused him of directly influencing editorial decisions and reshaping programming. One of the most visible shifts came at CNews, which moved to opinion-heavy programming and culture-war topics, turning into a right-wing partisan channel à la Fox News.
Supporters have argued that the channel is now covering issues such as immigration, insecurity and Islamist extremism that the French media establishment had long underplayed, while critics have accused it of sensationalism, populism, and promoting hard-right narratives.
While not formally aligned with any party, describing himself simply as a Christian democrat, Bolloré has promoted convergence between the French right and far-right, including an alliance between Les Républicains and the National Rally for the 2024 elections.
Bolloré is also a longtime friend of Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency was marked by close ties to business elites. Their relationship drew criticism after Sarkozy vacationed on Bolloré’s yacht in 2007. Sarkozy has also been defending Putin.
Blurring the line between journalism and political advocacy, the Bolloré media have increasingly promoted Putin fans such as Éric Zemmour, giving them prominent airtime and boosting their national profile. CNews even had to pay a €200,000 fine for his hate speech.
After the closure of Russian state propaganda media RT France, many of its employees found a new home on Bolloré’s media. An especially outrageous case, promoted to preposterous degrees with astonishing bad faith, is Xenia Fedorova, its former director.
At RT, Xenia was a protégée of Margarita Simonyan herself,who openly calls to bomb civilians, dreams of famines, and proclaims war against the whole of Europe. Hybrid warfare against us is already ongoing: France, as a key EU power, has been a major target of these attacks.
Xenia FedorovaWith Bolloré, at first Xenia was hosting a Canal+ series on Orthodox churches in France, while her former employer, Putin’s Russian state, bombs them in Ukraine, and tries to get control of all the French ones. Boundless hypocrisy:
Deg. 1: Religious persecutionDespite being promoted every week, across multiple platforms, free to say whatever Kremlin lie, she still has the nerve to complain about “freedom of speech”, without ever mentioning what happens to it under her dear Putin: murdered journalists and filtration camps.
On Bolloré’s channels, she exerts a decisive influence over their coverage of geopolitical issues. Guests who go against her such as Bruno Clermont are not invited any more — here goes freedom of speech again. Basically, Bolloré put his whole empire at her service, that is…
…at the service of the Kremlin propaganda she has served her whole life. Her book, of course, was published by a Bolloré publisher, even ghostwritten by a Bolloré ghostwriter. Her series on churches is on a Bolloré TV channel. Her opinion articles, in a Bolloré newspaper.
Rushing to her defense? Bolloré’s minions, who have the nerve (or were instructed?) to gush about her “long journalistic experience”, when she’s had… only one employer before him: war criminal Putin, working as a producer/director, not even pretending to be a journalist.
Yet some will still act as if Fedorova were some innocent journalist doing her work as part of a normal, honest career.
The Kremlin has long had strong influence on both far ends of the French political horseshoe: the far-left (with historic pro-Soviet/Stalinist currents) and the far-right (receptive to narratives around migration and antisemitism, both stirred up by the Kremlin as well).
Directly controlling the center has proved harder, so Kremlin efforts have instead focused on attacking Macron with AI-generated smear campaigns, drug allegations or conspiracy theories about his wife, the same tactics used against Zelenskyy.
Deepfake Bugatti TourbillonIn this context, Vincent Bolloré is a key player in bringing Kremlin narratives into the mainstream, shifting the Overton window to be receptive to Kremlin propaganda.
Just like RT France aimed to do, but now in an even more insidious way than their former open presence.
Just like RT France aimed to do, but now in an even more insidious way than their former open presence.
Why is Bolloré ridiculing himself and his staff like this by letting a Russian career propagandist so openly spread Putin’s BS? He claims it’s all for money, not politics, merely letting his people tell “the truth” (sic). But one thing’s for sure: by de facto putting his…
… media empire at the service of war criminal Putin’s “Vladivostok to Lisbon” imperial ambitions, Bolloré has handed him an even more dangerous weapon than he ever had with RT France.
Russia spends $5 billion a year on propaganda to manufacture support for its invasions through vatniks and narratives such as those now pushed by Bolloré’s empire.
Fact-based research to counter it takes time and effort — please support our work:
Fight Disinformation With Us: Support our Work | Vatnik Soup
More soup?
Links, documents, resources
Polls
Bolloré’s corporate lackeys to the rescue
Trial
Other
- The Man at the Center of the French Election Isn’t Even on the Ballot
- ‘We refuse to be hostages in an ideological war’: The letter signed by over 130 writers quitting publisher Grasset
- La Russie de Poutine est déjà en train d’attaquer l’Europe : cartographier les 60 opérations de guerre hybride menées depuis 2022 (fr)
- Comment les services français ont échoué à sanctionner Xenia Fedorova (fr)
- Macron wird zum „Kriegstreiber“ erklärt: Wie ein französischer Medienzar Stimmung für Putin macht (de)
- Die graue Eminenz: Medienzar Vincent Bolloré arbeitet am Bündnis zwischen Konservativen und Rechtsaussen in Frankreich (de)
- Entspannung auf dem Mittelmeer: Vor dem Einzug in den Elysée-Palast erholt sich der künftige französische Präsident Nicolas Sarkozy vor Malta einige Tage auf der 60-Meter-Yacht des Industriellen Vincent Bolloré. Das Luxusschiff "Paloma" soll über Whirlpool und Karaoke-Bar verfügen. (de)
- ‘Shameful’ Nicolas Sarkozy under fire for defending Putin
- Xenia Fedorova, la nouvelle tsar de Bolloré : l’ancienne patronne de RT France bénéficie d’un CDI sur CNews, où elle déverse sa propagande pro-Poutine sans jamais être contredite (fr)
- Tribune anti-Bolloré : Catherine Pégard, la ministre de la culture, regrette une réponse « disproportionnée » de la part du patron de Canal+, Maxime Saada (fr)
- En France, la lutte s’organise contre les appétits médiatiques du milliardaire Vincent Bolloré (fr)
- Des salariés d’Europe 1 manifestent contre « l’emprise croissante de Vincent Bolloré dans les médias » (fr)
- Compte rendu, Commission d’enquête sur la neutralité, le fonctionnement et le financement de l’audiovisuel public (fr)
- “Le sujet, ce n’est pas l’audiovisuel public, c’est son coût”, déclare Vincent Bolloré devant les députés (fr)
- Faits divers, immigration : les idées d’extrême droite se diffusent dans les médias et l’opinion (fr)
- Pluralisme en France : sur CNews, le grand contournement (fr)
- « Ça tourne à vide » : pourquoi les audiences de CNews s’essoufflent (fr)
- BFM-TV devance CNews et LCI pour le troisième mois de suite, Franceinfo loin derrière (fr)
- CNews fait le ménage parmi ses chroniqueurs: Le général Bruno Clermont, consultant défense très présent depuis 2022 dans «L’Heure des Pros» ou encore «Midi News», a officialisé son éviction de la chaîne du groupe Canal+. (fr)
- « Mes propos n’ont pas plu » : Après 4 ans sur CNews, Bruno Clermont a été limogé « sans explications » (fr)
- CNews sanctionnée d’une amende de 200 000€ à cause d’Éric Zemmour (fr)
- La CEDH valide les lourdes amendes infligées à l’ex-chaîne C8 : Les “ingérences” dans la “liberté d’expression” n’étaient “pas disproportionnées” (fr)
- Affaire Hanouna-Boyard : C8 condamné à une amende record de 3,5 millions d’euros (fr)
- Décision du 9 février 2023 mettant en demeure la société C8 (fr)
- Grasset : l’intégralité de la lettre de départ et la liste des auteurs signataires qui quittent la maison d’édition (fr)
- Comment Vincent Bolloré est devenu si puissant dans le monde de l’édition ? Comprendre en 3 minutes (fr)
- Derrière le livre d’Éric Ciotti, la plume du rédacteur en chef du JDD ? (fr)
- RT, la chaîne russe qui diffuse ce que lui murmure le Kremlin. (fr)
- Les médias du milliardaire Vincent Bolloré défendent désormais ouvertement la Russie (fr)
- Xenia Fedorova, la « journaliste » qui venait du froid (fr)
- Maxime Audinet : « Xenia Fedorova relaie activement et sans ambiguïté les récits russes, et les adapte aux audiences françaises » (fr)
- Xenia Fedorova, « journaliste » sous protection reprochée (fr)
- Xenia Fedorova, une voix du Kremlin amplifiée par l’empire Bolloré (fr)
- L’influente Xenia Fedorova, ancienne directrice de RT France et désormais protégée de Vincent Bolloré (fr)
- Xenia Fedorova, une propagandiste russe bien en poste chez Bolloré (fr)
- Les figures de l’armée de l’ombre de Poutine en France (fr)
- Une guerre hybride méchamment débridée (fr)
- Face à Trump et à Poutine, l’extrême droite française en toute soumission (fr)
- Anatomie de l’absurde : Owens, TASS et la guerre hybride du Kremlin (fr)
- A Paris, l’espionnage russe sous les coupoles (fr)
- L’incroyable histoire de la cathédrale orthodoxe en plein Paris (fr)