Saturday, July 5, 2025

Context

Stories in the Context section are not fakes. We publish them in order to provide greater insight for our readers about the techniques, methods and practices used by the Russian government in its information war. They appear on our site with the permission of their original publisher and reflect the views of the authors and not necessarily the position of StopFake’s editorial board.

Russian Police Say the Election Day Was ‘Calmest,’ After Clamping Down on Country-wide Protests

By Polygraph Ministry of Internal Affairs (Police), Russia “In general, the situation during the united Election Day remained calm.” Source: RIA-Novosti, September 9, 2018 FALSE Scores detained during the...

Russian Humor or Honest Confession? RT Admits it is Kremlin’s Propaganda Bullhorn

By Polygraph RT Russian information agency “The president of France slanders us because we slander him.”... “The longer you watch, the more upset Hillary Clinton becomes.” Source: RT...

“Not the murderer, but the murdered is guilty!”

By EU vs Disinfo As our favourite parody account Darth Putin frequently reminds us, one of the most repeated disinformation tactics is to accuse your counterpart...

What approaches are in play for fighting misinformation? Let us count the ways

By Nancy Watzman, Katie Donnelly, And Jessica Clark, for NiemanLab In March 2017, the Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, and the Rita Allen Foundation hosted a...

Kremlin Watch Briefing: Russia created fake independent news sites in the Baltics

Topics of the Week State-owned Russian news agency financed three seemingly-independent news sites in the Baltic countries that were instructed to produce pro-Kremlin content. Michael Carpenter: “Russia’s manipulation of...

UK’s Skripal evidence obliterates hollow Russian propaganda

By Sarah Hurst (@XSovietNews), for StopFake The morning after the OPCW confirmed that Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley had been poisoned by novichok in the...

Potemkin Videos

By EU vs Disinfo The story about Russia’s 18th Century “Potemkin villages” is well known also outside Russia. When Catherine the Great travelled with foreign dignitaries to inspect the...

Russian State TV Channel Airs New Program Devoted to Putin

By VOANews MOSCOW — A Russian state-owned television channel has a new weekly current affairs program devoted to President Vladimir Putin. The first episode of "Moscow. Kremlin....

Non-Google search engine launches a news module based on “diverse, quality sources”

By Laura Hazard-Owen, for NiemanLab Look, it’s completely understandable that you might feel like skipping a story about Bing, the Microsoft-owned search engine that has a...

Disinformation and Paranoia

By EU vs Disinfo Do Russians actually believe the disinformation they see on the national TV channels? Or do they rather take it with a...