Ukraine war boosts EU's anti-fake news efforts while conspiracy theories spread
Since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, internet trolls have stepped up their activities by hacking, spreading planted stories, and pushing pro-Moscow propaganda. But western media outlets are not entirely innocent either.
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The reason Russia invaded Ukraine is because Moscow suspected Kiev of secretly producing nuclear bombs in Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster which has been closed ever since.
That's if you choose to believe a report by the India's Economic Times, which said the Russian military "reportedly seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant amid apprehensions that Ukraine, allegedly backed by foreign powers may have launched the process to build nuclear weapons based on Plutonium-239 available in the complex."
According to the report, Ukraine was "allegedly making plans to produce 8-10 nuclear bombs with the available plutonium with support from certain foreign powers." No shred of proof was given for the allegations, nor was it sourced properly.
Another bizarre story was spread by the head of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, who, according to The Times of Israel, said that a group of Chechen assassins sent to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were "eliminated" after their plot was foiled.
Danilov said information about the Chechen plot "came from agents from Russia’s FSB security service who are opposed to the war", indicating a major split within Russia's fighting forces - a fact that is impossible for independent observers to check.
Russia Today
Meanwhile, Russian state-owned TV-station Russia Today (RT) has consistently called the Russian invasion into Ukraine a "special military operation" and focused on how Russia is supposedly protecting breakaway regions from Ukrainian aggression, while depicting the territory occupied by pro-Moscow rebels as about twice as big as it is in reality.
Australia-based The Conversation says that on matters directly related to Russia’s immediate national interests, and in the case of the Ukraine war, RT "dutifully reported the Kremlin’s assertion that its goals were demilitarisation and denazification," repeating the narratives that the Russian government has for some years used to try "to delegitimise the Ukrainian establishment through an association with the far right."
For the big-tech platforms and the European Union, the reporting by RT and pro-Putin outlet Sputnik News was irritating enough to be banned.
On 1 March, Google announced that it was blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe.
"This builds on our indefinite pause of monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms, meaning media outlets such as RT are not allowed to monetize their content or advertise on our platforms," according to Kent Walker, President of Google's Global Affairs Unit.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we’re blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately. It’ll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action.
— Google Europe (@googleeurope) March 1, 2022
Disinformation
The European Union also said it was looking into banning the two pro-Russia channels, and is stepping up its fight against Russia's propaganda war.
The website EU vs Disinformation, run by the East StratCom Task Force of the EU's External Action Service (EEAS,) mainly focuses on fake news from Russia.
EU vs Disinformation was created in 2015 after an European Council meeting, citing "the need to challenge Russia's ongoing disinformation campaigns."
On Wednesday, the site ran a "guide to deciphering pro-Kremlin disinformation around Putin's war," saying that "Kremlin media trolls" have gone "into overdrive" with their use of "cheap tricks of the rhetoric of disinformation."
The site uses what it calls the "Swamped" model, formed by initials of catchphrases.
S: Strawmen: Attack views or ideas never actually expressed by the target.
W: Whataboutism: Deflect the discussion away from the topic.
A: Attack: Use brutal language to discourage the opponents.
M: Mockery: Use sarcasm to belittle the opposition.
P: Provocations: Who benefits from this?
E: Exhaust: Drown the opposition in details and technicalities.
D: Denial: Flatly deny any evidence.
But Western media also made headlines which, if not checked, could be interpreted as "fake news." On 1 March, Zürich-based Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) reported the bankruptcy of the Nord Stream II Pipeline.
The information was lifted afterwards by a wide range of western media and press agencies but a rebuke published on the website of Nord Stream II A.G. proved the article wrong.
"The company only informed the local authorities that the company had to terminate contracts with employees following the recent geopolitical developments leading to the imposition of US sanctions on the company," the website dryly remarked.
The question remains: is the ban of RT and Sputnik effective or even useful?
Apart from depriving observers from a chance to scrutinize how Moscow's propaganda machine works, The Conversation points out that "while RT’s coverage of the war is biased towards Russia and clearly misleading," it says that the outlet's audience is "relatively small" while a ban may open the way to more tit-for-tat measures by Moscow, such as forbidding Deutsche Welle from broadcasting in Russia after Germany had prohibited RT's German broadcasts on 4 February.
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