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Russia using disinformation to create 'division and distrust', EU official says

Some anti-vaccine accounts on social media have now have turned to spreading lies about Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

DISINFORMATION ABOUT RUSSIA’S actions and Ukraine’s leadership is part of efforts to create “division” and “distrust” among people in countries that oppose the invasion, according to an EU official. 

Additionally, some anti-vaccine accounts on social media that published false information about Covid-19 have now have turned to spreading lies about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Delphine Colard, head of the European Parliament’s spokesperson’s unit, which monitors disinformation, said that internal propaganda in Russia is an effort to create ‘buy-in’ among citizens for the invasion while false information pushed outside its borders tries to dispel opposition to its aggression.

Speaking to reporters this week in Strasbourg, one of the seats of the European Union’s parliament, Colard outlined some of the tactics used by Russia to spread false information about the war and its motivations.

“Mastering the information has always been the key in wars. It is something that has been prepared,” Colard said.

“Certain words have been implanted in the national narratives but also in Russia Today and Sputnik, which are not media – they are outlets of the Kremlin machine.”

She described how Russia has leveraged words like genocide to create a false picture of Ukraine; has claimed that Ukraine has chemical and biological weapons that it was preparing to use against Russian-speaking minority groups; and has made other allegations against the country and its treatment of Russian speakers.

“It’s been fueling the population with those narratives for months,” Colard said.

Russian state-backed media like Russia Today and Sputnik – which the EU banned from member states last week – have been used to spread false, anti-Europe messages, she said.

“It’s not a question of being a media and answering to the codes that relate to media and journalism,” she said.

“It’s not journalism… they are just printing narratives that are from a government. They are a propaganda instrument and that’s it.

“Whenever they cover the European Parliament and they come here, they take an extract from the plenary and then they make it say what they want from it.”

july-7-2018-moscow-russia-mobile-tv-studio-russia-today-on-manezhnaya-square-in-moscow Russia Today's mobile studio in Moscow, 2018 Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Colard explained that the aim of the disinformation is to “increase and sow division in our countries, distrust in the politics we have, and to make sure that autocractic regimes are seen as something desirable”.

“The idea is that their regime is better and more able to answer the needs of the citizens,” she said.

Online techniques

“It used to be bots and fake accounts, but now the platforms are taking them down – at least in English,” Colard said.

“What they do now as a technique is, for example, using the comment section of very reputable websites like Le Monde or the Times. They create comments and then people say you’ve seen on the Times that people support the war in Russia or the position of Kremlin – of course, they implanted the comments themselves.”

In the first 14 hours of Russia’s invasion, factchecking organisations found and analysed 34 pieces of disinformation in Europe about the conflict. 

Since then, that number has grown to more than 350, according to the European Digital Media Observatory.

“Everybody is allowed to have an opinion. You may disagree… and you can spread it on social media, if you want,” Colard said.

However, “if you share [false information] on purpose, using tools to amplify it and give the impression that it’s the sole view that has worth, then it’s different”.

It’s not a question of your opinion, it’s that you pretend that it’s a fact and you pretend that there is grounds behind it – you create a false amplification behind a narrative.

During the pandemic, there were waves of false information about the virus, vaccines, masks, restrictions, and more – many of which The Journal debunked.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, on social media, “some anti-vaccine accounts are now all of a sudden not talking about Covid anymore but talking about Ukraine and spreading the Russian narrative”, Colard said.

“They’ve been using that over the past with Covid and again now because the aim is to sow division,” she said.

In Russia, the Duma – its parliament – passed a new law last week that imposes a prison sentence of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally “fake” news about the military. The Russian state is insisting that its military is not waging a war or invasion but a “special operation”. 

The decision has led to media outlets pulling out of Russia, including major international media like CNN, the New York Times and Bloomberg News.

“It’s most concerning when you see independent media being closed in Russia and also the correspondents of newspapers in Europe not being able to do their work.”

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    Mute Philip Morgan
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    Aug 29th 2018, 7:41 AM

    Wouldn’t agree with his politics but when he often stopped personal attacks against Obama during the election campaign stating that he was a decent man. That touch of common decency was severely lacking from the last campaign.

    I wonder what the hell Trump will do over the next few days to steal the headlines

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    Mute JimmyMc
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    Aug 29th 2018, 9:26 AM

    @Philip Morgan: Bomb Iran in his honour? He’s been pushing it for long enough, it would be a fitting tribute to his lifes work

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg&feature=youtu.be

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    Mute Dermot Foley
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    Aug 29th 2018, 10:25 AM

    @Philip Morgan: not sure if youve actually read about his tactics or just one watched a clip about him not allowing one of his supporters call Obama an Arab, but he actually launched one of the most racist presidential campaigns in preceding 2008.
    He is also a Zionist supporter and actively supported Israel’s settlement expansion.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Aug 29th 2018, 11:16 AM

    @Dermot Foley: By no means was he flawless, calling his wife a cvnt (she had teased him about balding), a teenage Chelsea Clinton ugly, his fellow senators a$$holes and referring to his captors in Vietnam as g°°ks (he later clarified that it referred only to the individuals that had tortured him, but still). Yes he was an a$$hole, but he did something that seems to be completely dead in American politics now, and that is working across the aisle. His concession speech in ’08 was spectacular. He was flawed, right-wing, personally principled, often well-meaning, sometimes prejudiced, diplomatic, thoughtful, and hot-headed. Claiming that he was evil-hearted is just as dishonest as immortalising him as a “true American hero”. I think he said it best himself, a flawed patriot.

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    Mute JimmyMc
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    Aug 29th 2018, 12:47 PM

    @Dave O Keeffe: Plagiarism is nothing to be proud of, but plagiarising someones eulogy, someone elses personal thoughts and feelings is the epitome of sadness. Hang your head in shame

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/john-mccain-death-legacy-trump-us-senator-vietnam-war-a8511441.html

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Aug 29th 2018, 1:44 PM

    @JimmyMc: yeah, bits of it summed up my opinion pretty well so I copied it and made some minor tweaks. So what? If that’s your take away from it then I feel sad for you

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Aug 29th 2018, 1:50 PM

    For those that are curious, this is the copied portion “he was flawed, right-wing, personally principled, often well-meaning, sometimes prejudiced, diplomatic, thoughtful, and hot-headed. Claiming that he was evil-hearted is just as dishonest as immortalising him as a “true American hero”.” Yes I took it from an article in the independent, because it was wonderfully phrased and summed McCain up quite well. Probably should have given credit though.

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    Mute JimmyMc
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    Aug 29th 2018, 1:50 PM

    @Dave O Keeffe: Journalists from national publications summing up your opinion, comical stuff that. Don’t feel sad for me, I’ve never had to resort to using someone elses feeling to express and pass them off as my own

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Aug 29th 2018, 2:13 PM

    @JimmyMc: when talking about a person very often many people will feel the same. Hilarious I know!

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    Mute raymond grehan
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    Aug 29th 2018, 9:11 AM

    Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of this man’s urges. He was captured and tortured in Vietnam and held for 2 years. Instead of seeing war, especially modern abstract wars were no one is even sure why they are fighting in the first place, as the antithesis of the evolved human being, he went the other way and became obsessed with pushing US intervention militarily, and the rest is history – endless war, the destruction of Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and much of Syria, hundred of thousands dead and the present migrant crisis. Rest in peace John McCain , although I do not think you will find much peace.

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    Mute Jay Coleman
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    Aug 29th 2018, 9:20 AM

    @raymond grehan: yes because he was the only voice advocating for war. It’s all very well us criticizing the US but then again we weren’t forced into 2 world wars costing the lives of over 600k soldiers for wars that were on the other side of the world.

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    Mute ktsiwot
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    Aug 29th 2018, 9:29 AM

    @Jay Coleman: You would think that the lives of over 6000k soldiers is an even better excuse not to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have been a proven abject failure.

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    Mute raymond grehan
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    Aug 29th 2018, 9:37 AM

    @Jay Coleman: Please read my comment again. Firstly I do not mention the 2 world wars? Secondly I refer to modern abstract wars were no one really knows why they are there in the first place.
    p.s. The Nazis and the communists in Russia were both funded in part by Wall street and Rothchild banking circles .
    The research of Doctor Anthony Sutton.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OshpXlULhTk

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    Mute Jay Coleman
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    Aug 29th 2018, 10:01 AM

    @raymond grehan: ah stop once you mention that Rothschild nonsense you just come across as a tinfoil hat.

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    Mute raymond grehan
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    Aug 29th 2018, 10:20 AM

    @Jay Coleman: ok ignore the excellent research of Prof. Sutton if you choose. It is your choice.

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    Mute ihcalaM
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    Aug 29th 2018, 11:17 AM

    @raymond grehan: Putting an academic name on the Rothschild theories doesn’t make them any less loony, Raymond.

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    Mute John Flood
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    Aug 29th 2018, 8:09 AM

    Fair winds and following seas…

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    Mute PV Nevin
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    Aug 29th 2018, 11:32 AM

    McCain was a warmonger. Whole swathes of the world have been laid waste by the American ruling class. We are supposed to commemorate one of the political leaders of that barbarism? Just because relentless official public opinion tries to befuddle our brains does not mean we can’t actually think for ourselves.
    Why the US ruling class mourns John McCain
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/27/pers-a27.html

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    Mute PV Nevin
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    Aug 29th 2018, 12:10 PM
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