Zakharova’s ‘Slap’stick Diplomacy

It began on the evening of Sunday 25 May, when Emmanuel Macron arrived in Vietnam with his wife, Brigitte, at the start of an official tour of Southeast Asia. As the pair disembarked at Hanoi airport, a few press agency cameras caught a fleeting moment: Brigitte Macron’s hand moved toward her husband’s face. He appeared to flinch, then, seemingly aware of the cameras, composed himself. The clip was blurry.

The Élysée Palace insisted it was a moment of “complicity” (“we were joking around, as we often do,” Macron would later explain). French media described it as a “chamaillerie,” or tiff. RT France, the Kremlin-backed outlet now banned in the EU, preferred “tension.” Online, the verdict came swiftly: the president had been slapped. On the French network CNews, speculation ventured into even murkier waters, with one commentator floating the idea that Macron might be a victim of domestic abuse.

Into this feverish swirl stepped Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry’s reliably French-baiting spokesperson. Posting to her 526,000 Telegram followers the next day, Zakharova offered her own reading of the incident—one that combined deadpan sarcasm, conspiracy-laced subtext and weaponised ridicule in equal measure.

First, she described a “right hook” from Brigitte Macron—an unsubtle dig at the president’s supposed lack of masculinity. Then she dubbed it the latest “Emmanuel-gate,” elevating a non-event into the realm of manufactured scandal. She mused that perhaps the First Lady had “misjudged her strength”—a sly nod to the long-running conspiracy theory alleging Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman.

Zakharova wasn’t finished. She imagined offering the president a “handkerchief”—a reference to a viral clip in which Macron discreetly removed a tissue from his desk, breathlessly interpreted by some online conspiracists as an attempt to conceal a packet of cocaine. And then came the kicker: “Perhaps it was the hand of the Kremlin.”

It was a judo move worthy of her title—an ironic nod to legitimate Western concerns about Russian interference that doubled as a mockery of those who attempt to challenge Kremlin disinformation. In one stroke, she turned the accusation back on her critics, while drawing attention to the very paranoia she sought to deride.

Zakharova’s Telegram post is instructive. In an era of AI-generated videos and synthetic audio, it’s easy to forget that conspiracy mongering still often relies on much older tools: tone, timing, and insinuation. No fake footage was needed here—just a grainy image, a few suggestive lines, and a sharp sense of the cultural terrain.

It is a reminder that the Kremlin’s disinformation strategy doesn’t always aim to convince. Sometimes, it’s enough to confuse, to taunt, to destabilise—and to remind its audience that even the smallest moment can be seized, twisted, and weaponised.