By EU vs Disinfo Russian political decision makers continue to prioritise running disinformation campaigns at home and abroad. One of the implementers of this policy, the chief editor of RT, Margarita Simonyan (above), has compared the network she leads to “a ministry of defence”. Obviously, such high ambitions need a sizable budget. However, when the price tag of the propaganda is made public, the Russians themselves – citizens whose taxes will…
By Lisa Fazio, for The Conversation When you think of visual misinformation, maybe you think of deepfakes – videos that appear real but have actually been created using powerful video editing algorithms. The creators edit celebrities into pornographic movies, and they can put words into the mouths of people who never said them. But the majority of visual misinformation that people are exposed to involves much simpler forms of deception.…
By EU vs Disinfo Disinformation framing Latvia as Russophobic is part of a long-term campaign, this time resurfacing due to implementation of US sanctions. Starting from December, pro-Kremlin outlets have been targeting Latvia and accusing it of Russophobia and of acting as a US puppet and a failed state, new analysis by the Centre for East European Studies (CEEPS) has found. The report analyses the main narratives targeting Latvia, based on…
The recent registration of a draft law in the Ukrainian parliament outlining military consulting activities has caused an avalanche of fakes in Russia’s pro-Kremlin press. The law legalizes violence, confirms the country’s status as an illegal arms trafficking center, and calls for “licenses to kill”, Kremlin faithful outlets wail. Ukraine needs such a law, the fakes claim, because its soldiers are massively deserting and therefore private armies will replace Ukraine’s…
Ukraine will face serious food shortages and rising food prices because of the coronavirus, announced the pro-Kremlin online publication Ukraina.ru, illustrating their alarmist fake story with empty supermarket shelves. The publication cites Alexey Doroshenko, an expert from Russia’s National Council on Economic Development who claims that problems with food supplies in Ukraine have already begun as the number of merchant ships from China to Ukraine has shrunk drastically and the…
LINK: www.pewresearch.org ➚ By Hanaa’ Tameez, for NiemanLab If, on this Monday in an election year, you are hopeful that technology and the internet will improve democracy in the next decade, you’re in the minority. A new Pew Research Center report (done in partnership with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center) surveyed hundreds of technology experts about whether or not digital disruption will help or hurt democracy by 2030. Of the…
By EU vs Disinfo Russian civil society continues to dismantle pro-Kremlin disinformation, using both laughter and journalistic investigations. February has been a good month for those Russians who want to push back against pro-Kremlin disinformation. Propaganda narratives have been challenged in a series of articles and videos, often coming from the hands of investigative journalists and other members of Russia’s civil society. The preferred approaches in the response to the…
By EU vs Disinfo Denis Korotkov is a Russian journalist who has systematically followed the trail of oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, “Putin’s chef”, worldwide: From the “troll factory” in St. Petersburg to the activities of the military organisation known as the Wagner Group in Syria and in Africa. Denis Korotkov’s investigations appear on a regular basis in the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. He has previously also worked for Fontanka, an online news…
By EU vs Disinfo 80 years ago: Stalin sending German Jews to Hitler Historical revisionism is an important strand of disinformation. The EUvsDisinfo database contains a large number of cases of this kind, most of which pertain to rewriting the history of World War II. Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets are attempting to diminish the meaning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, concluded between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in late August 1939. The…
By Janusz Bugajski, for CEPA Kremlin Proposals May Look Appealing but They Raise Russia’s Influence at Our Expense With U.S. presidential elections fast approaching, the specter of another attempted “reset” with Putinist Russia looms over Washington. Regardless of who takes the reigns in the White House next January, there is a danger that in the hope of rebuilding relations with Moscow the administration will accommodate Russia’s European ambitions and undercut…
