Russia: Does website closure indicate the Kremlin is feeling economic pinch?
By Casey Michel, for Eurasianet It seems that Russia’s economic troubles may be starting to hinder the Kremlin’s use of electronic media to push its agenda. With little fanfare, the Moscow-backed media outlet Russia Direct ceased operations this past March. Founded in 2013 and funded by the official government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russia Direct, according to former editor-in-chief Pavel Koshkin, strove for a more balanced, analytical approach than other Russian…
By Michele A. Berdy, for The Moscow Times Вступить в тайный сговор: to collude With all this talk in the U.S. about collusion and Russians, I wondered: How do you collude in Russian? After all, if you want to indulge in a bit of aiding and abetting, you need to know what it’s called so you can ask for it — or deny it. I poked around my dictionaries, looking…
The latest edition of StopFake News with Marko Suprun. This week we we debunk yet another fake claim about Ukrainian military shelling OSCE monitoring missions, set the record straight about EU sanctions and mendacious claims about the iconic Odessa Film Studios.
July 29, 2017 - 12:51
News
The Russian site Ukraina.ru published a story last week claiming that Ukraine was in danger of a severe drought due to the closure of the North-Crimean water canal. Ukraine will self-destruct and run out of fresh water because of its water blockade of Crimea declared RIA Novosti, Novostnoye Agentstvo Kharkov, Gosnovosti and other Russian sites. On April 26, Ukraine closed the sluices of the North Crimean Canal, halting water supply…
July 29, 2017 - 11:15
News
Russia’s Defense Ministry television channel Zvezda announced this week that the European Union would impose sanctions on the US in response to Washington’s new sanctions against Moscow. Citing an anonymous Brussels source, Zvezda presented this information as a done deal. The anonymous source, according to Zvezda, claims the EU will limit American companies’ access to European banks in response to sanctions against Russia. There have been no announcements from the…
By The Moscow Times State-run television is the principal source of news for a majority of young Russians, the independent Russian television channel Dozhd reported Friday. Fifty-four percent of Russians aged between 18 and 24 watch government-funded Channel One news casts, Dozhd reported citing a poll produced by the independent Levada Center. Channel One was the main source of information for 72 percent of respondents in all age groups, the poll published by Dozhd found, while just 26 percent said they never switch to television for…
By Urve Eslas, for CEPA On 11 July, a group of senior U.S. and European officials gathered in Washington to launch the transatlantic Alliance for Securing Democracy—an initiative of the German Marshall Fund that aims to “to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions.” The next day, Estonian-language websites Postimees.ee and Delfi.ee reported that the initiative’s goal…
By Brian Whitmore, RFE/RL Agitprop has its limits. Active measures have a downside. Influence operations often result in blowback. And if these lessons aren’t yet obvious to Vladimir Putin and his cronies, they aren’t paying attention. As the sanctions bill currently before the United States Congress starkly illustrates, Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election have resulted in a systemic backlash. Likewise, Moscow’s meddling in the French election has…
By East Stratcom Training in how to combat pro-Kremlin disinformation is a “top priority” for the 200 Danish soldiers who will be deployed to Estonia as a part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence. This was the message from Denmark’s defence minister, Claus Hjorth Frederiksen, in an interview last week with Denmark’s public broadcaster, DR (also reported by Reuters). “The aim is to create distrust among ourselves” “It is a whole…
By Jim Kovpak, Russia Without BS You’ve got to hand it to George Soros. Not because he got so rich, but because he’s now considered to be behind virtually every nefarious plot worldwide, from Hungary, to Ukraine, to the United States. Depending on who you’re talking to, Soros is funding Islamic fundamentalists, fascists, or Communists. The latter conspiracy, the Communist conspiracy, is most popular in the US among the far…
