Kremlin Watch Briefing: Italian Lega party turns to Russia for funding
Topics of the Week Italian far-right Lega party attempted to secure Russian financing for the European Parliament election. Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis: Lithuania’s president systematically targeted by disinformation. Leading American experts warn against insufficient American response to the threat of Russian disinformation during their testimonies. New study: How the Russian intelligence services upkeep the trust of their citizens. Good Old Soviet Joke After a speech, Brezhnev confronts his speechwriter. “I asked for a 15-minute…
By Margarita Assenova, for Polygraph Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko Russian Ambassador to Serbia “The constant pressure of the West on Serbia, exerted through the European Union, is evident, …while the U.S. and its allies are encouraging Kosovo to maintain tensions in the region.” Source: Sputnik Serbia False Serbia is under no more pressure than any other EU candidate country in the last 30 years. However, Serbia must normalize relations with Kosovo in…
18 July a coalition of CSOs consisting of “The Commission on Journalism Ethics”, “Human Rights Platform”, “Ukrainian Media and Communications Institute” and “StopFake”, with the support of the Council of Europe Projects*, presenred interim results of the independent monitoring of media coverage of the Early Parliamentary elections in Ukraine during the period of 22 June – 12 July 2019. DOWNLOAD REPORT (in Ukrainian) Russian influence on the Ukrainian elections and…
By Oksana Iliuk, for Ukraine World Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regards the ban on Russian online platforms to be inefficient. Meanwhile, Ukraine is still facing Russian information aggression. Here are conclusions to bear in mind after the 2-year long ban. In May 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko imposed sanctions on some Russian Internet services. Namely, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki (the two most widely-used social networks in Ukraine); Mail.ru (an email service);…
Debunking Russian disinformation from two of the most prolific fake news factories the Kremlin has in its industrial lying machine.
By Alana Schetzer, for NiemanLab Lumping together disinformation campaigns with news the government says isn’t in the “public interest” is a recipe for abuse. The rapid spread of fake news can influence millions of people, impacting elections and financial markets. A study on the impact of fake news on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for instance, has found that fake news stories about Hillary Clinton were “very strongly linked” to…
By Metamorphosis Foundation, for Global Voices This story originally appeared on Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement. On July 7, Prime Minister of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev spoke to journalists in Skopje about a YouTube video in which he appears talking to two Russian pranksters pretending to be the former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and NATO Secretary General Jens…
By Polygraph Elena Serova Russian State Duma Deputy, ex-cosmonaut “From the board of the International Space Station, I got to see with the naked eye, how the bombs and shells exploded in the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk. And they were flying from the side of the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At that time, unarmed people died there.” Source: OSCE Parliamentary Assembly False Serova’s claims are impossible.…
By EU vs Disinfo In 1909, a group of British colonialists took the initiative to create a group, called the Society of the Round Table. Since then, the group has managed to take over decision making in the United States, turning the US into a dumb giant, executing the orders of the British rulers. This, according to pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets. For the rest of us, the stories about The Round…
By Nicholas Diakopoulos and Deborah Johnson, for NiemanLab Seven scenarios — from faked scandalous audio to voter intimidation to imagined journalistic corruption — show the sorts of misinformation disruptions that could be coming. New technologies used to produce deepfakes are rapidly advancing and becoming more accessible, allowing users to make compelling video and audio clips of individuals doing and saying things they never did or said. Users can, for instance,…
