On September 29, Russian and separatist media mockingly distorted a comment made by a Ukrainian politician and pilot who is now being tried in Russia for killing two Russian journalists. The reports said that Nadiya Savchenko had decided to give evidence in Russian. RIA Novosti quoted her as saying: “It is difficult for me to speak in Russian, but as I have pains in my tongue and ears I will…
In previous investigative pieces for RuNet Echo, Lawrence Alexander has exposed a large network of pro-Kremlin websites, and (together with Aric Toler) provided an in-depth look at some of these resources. In this installment of his network saga, Alexander follows an offline lead from the tangled online web of sites rooting for the Kremlin agenda. “Material Evidence” is one of few pro-Putin Internet projects connected to Russia’s “troll factories” with a…
On September 28, 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin took the stage at the UN General Assembly for the first time in a decade. “Putin Speech Bingo” successfully predicted many of the Russian leader’s talking points. As expected, the speech was replete with innuendos, historical references and outright falsehoods. Putin claimed that the original purpose of the UN has been violated by “those that found themselves at the top of the…
![StopFakeNews #53 [ENGLISH] with Guy Archer](https://www.stopfake.org/content/uploads/2015/09/11990570_963500417022537_3363260227977485321_n-1716x700_c.jpg "StopFakeNews #53 [ENGLISH] with Guy Archer")
This week, publisher and editor Guy Archer is the StopFake News guest anchor. Websites manipulate and post a staged photo of a young boy walking among bombed buildings to stir emotions against Ukraine’s army. Photos are faked to show the Party of Region’s participation in elections in the self-described Donetsk People’s Republic. The U.S. President allegedly charges Ukraine’s leadership with committing genocide against its own people. And REN-TV botches a…
Russia’s media and political bosses have managed to shift the nation’s attention from Ukraine to Syria in the past few weeks. Damascus and Aleppo now fill the air waves in place of Donetsk and Kramatorsk. Kremlin-friendly “sociologists” and “political scientists” dutifully report that fewer Russians now follow events in Ukraine and that those who do are generally elderly. According to state-run pollster VTsIOM, “Interest in the situation in the neighboring state is more often shown by the elderly (82 percent are 60 years or older) than by young people…
Jelena Solomina, a petite blond, and Dmitri Pastuhhov, whose wavy mane of hair is pulled back with sunglasses, pace across their unfinished television studio in central Tallinn. As hosts of the new “morning show” on Estonian’s first public television station in Russian, which launches Monday, they face a formidable to-do list: everything from deciding when their working day starts to the design of the on-air kitchen where they’ll make their…
Having followed with some interest the work @GCINEWS has been doing to expose the leftwing UK allies of Putin’s Russia, I decided to take a first look at networks of Stop The War Coalition activists to see how and to what extent they cross with known Kremlin Troll networks. The middle five seed accounts (graph below) were derived from information @GCINEWS helpfully provided about STWC, while the network of Russian…
Information has always been part of conflict. Thucydides detailed the effects of messages dispatched during the Peloponnesian War, and “narrative” is frequently cited today as an important part of the war against the Islamic State. Of the nations that practice information warfare, the most persistent is Russia. In a recent article for the Institute for the Study of War, Maria Snegovaya describes Russia’s dexterity at using “reflexive control,” which she…
On September 24, several Ukrainian media falsely reported that Russian television channel Zvezda, famous for its fake news items about Ukraine, had reported that a well-known football player, Andriy Shevchenko, had been appointed as the Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada. The news was accompanied by a screenshot allegedly from the Russian channel’s site. Fake screenshot The news was then posted by NikVesti, inforesist.org, vlasti.net, pl.com.ua, from-ua.com, rupor.info, joinfo.ua. Ukraine’s 1+1 television…
On September 23, internet media posted false reports claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama had “accused Ukrainian authorities of the genocide of their own people” in a speech to a business roundtable. They cited CNN as their source. They quoted Obama as saying: “With the inability and unwillingness of Ukrainian authorities to improve things, their actions make the conditions of all the population considerably worse and can’t be called anything…
