Source: Maldita.es
- Since at least 2014, hoaxes and disinformation have been circulating in multiple countries and languages accusing the West of attacking Russia
- This is the “most common” narrative, according to the European External Action Service, but it coexists with apparently contradictory misinformation
- On the one hand, they send the message that Russia is fighting the war against the West, and not against Ukraine; on the other, that Ukraine has less and less support and that, therefore, Russia’s victory is closer
- It is no coincidence that disinformation campaigns converge with narratives that contradict each other: it is a Kremlin strategy that aims to keep “its opponents unbalanced,” according to experts
- These campaigns not only try to destabilise allied countries, they also influence those soldiers who decide to go to fight at the front in Ukraine of their own free will
Hoaxes claim that Western countries are attacking Russia; disinformation claims at the same time that these same governments have stopped supporting Ukraine. These cross-border disinformation campaigns spread content about the role of NATO and Western countries through actors close to or linked to the Kremlin. Although seemingly contradictory, they have been part of a strategy for at least ten years and have become more prevalent in recent months.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this lack of coherent narratives is not accidental but is intended to keep “their opponents off balance” as a strategy.
This investigation is the third instalment of a collaborative project from the fact-checking organisations StopFake (Ukraine), Delfi (Lithuania), Media Development Foundation (Georgia), Chequeado (Argentina), La Silla Vacía (Colombia), Animal Político (Mexico) and EsPaja (Venezuela), led by Maldita.es (Spain). By creating a pioneering technological tool for the study of FIMI and cross-border disinformation campaigns, a cross-border database system centralises and functions as a repository of disinformation content detected in these countries. The use of a common methodology allows us to identify cross-border disinformation campaigns, as well as narratives that move simultaneously in Europe and Latin America.
Accusations without evidence, distortion of reality or dissemination of real images as if they were from Ukraine or from the present day when they are from months or years ago, are some of the tactics used to achieve their objectives, deploying a wide variety of actors ranging from the president himself, Vladimir Putin, to media outlets that support or are controlled by Russia, as well as influencers on social networks.
Hoaxes and misinformation appear every time a country talks about sending aid to Ukraine
Content with claims such as NATO has recently bombed Russia’s Tver region, or that countries such as France or Lithuania have sent troops to Ukraine, have been circulating in different countries at the same time in recent months. While the disinformative content, the hoaxes, vary from country to country, they are all part of the same narrative that NATO or NATO countries are directly attacking Russia.
Between March and May 2024, a hoax went viral in Georgia, Colombia and Mexico that Chinese President Xi Jinping had said that China and Russia were “partners and friends”, and if, under US influence, NATO were to start a conflict with Russia, China would use the military resources at its disposal to protect Russia.
Not true: there is no record of such statements by the Chinese president. The BRICS group (an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is an informal political and security, economic and cultural cooperation group.
These are cross-border disinformation campaigns that travel from one continent to another in a short period. According to a 2023 US State Department report, “the Kremlin resurrects this disinformation narrative every time Ukraine’s partners announce more military assistance to Ukraine”. In this way, they present the conflict to the Russian population as a war “chosen by them against Ukraine in response to perceived threats from the United States and NATO”.
In recent months, we have seen hoaxes and misinformation arise after a country’s president has made a statement about the war or shown support for Ukraine. It also happened after Ukraine launched US-made longer-range missiles against Russia for the first time:
● Fact: At the end of February 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron said (and has repeated on other occasions) that he did not rule out sending Western soldiers to Ukraine, should Russian troops advance into Ukrainian territory, to ensure that Ukraine withstands a possible offensive by Moscow.
● Disinformation: in March and subsequent months a hoax circulated that France was sending troops to the front.
● Fact-check: On 6 May, France’s Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs denied this and labelled it a “disinformation campaign“. The hoax has been circulated in countries such as Spain, Georgia and
Portugal, among others. In Lithuania, it was claimed that its president, Gitanas Nausėda, was willing to send soldiers to the front. However, there is no evidence of such statements, but he expressed his support for discussions on the possible sending of foreign troops to Ukraine for training. EUvsDisinfo already warned about this disinformation strategy in May 2024.
● Fact: In November 2024 Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russia.
● Disinformation: A video has circulated claiming that Russian state television has threatened European cities with a nuclear attack.
● Fact-check: The video is real, but it is not from now, it was broadcast in July 2024, following a US announcement to deploy US military forces to NATO in Germany. In the video, the presenter said that if the deal became a reality, all European capitals would be “at risk from Russian missiles” in Kaliningrad. In the footage, they point out that NATO bases in Germany and countries such as France, the Czech Republic and the UK would be under Russian attack.
● Fact: On 19 November 2024, Ukraine launched US long-range missiles against Russian territory for the first time.
● Disinformation: A video of European parliamentarians clapping has gone viral. It has been circulated with claims that they are “cheering approval for the launch of US missiles from Ukraine to attack Russia”.
● Fact-check: It was also a hoax: the images were taken after Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky’s speech at a plenary session on 19 November 2024. In his speech, he did not mention the launching of US missiles at Russia. Maldita.es located 17 videos (with more than 10,000 views) in 4 languages (Spanish, English, Italian and French) with this content.
The narrative that points to NATO or its component countries attacking Russia directly is, according to the European External Action Service, the “most common” narrative in the messages and claims analysed in its first report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Threats of Interference (FIMI).
This narrative has been active for at least a decade, explained Roman Osadchuk, Research Associate for Eurasia at the Digital Forensic Research Laboratory of the Atlantic Council, a US think tank in the field of international affairs and close to NATO, in an interview with Deutsche Welle. “They probably started already during the Euromaidan demonstrations, around 2014. Since then, the Russians have been claiming that the West is interfering in Ukraine,” he explained.
The Ukrainian fact-checker StopFake has done various fact-checks on this narrative since at least 2016. For example, that year, Kremlin-controlled or Kremlin-linked media reported that there had been warnings of “an imminent NATO attack”. In 2020, they fact-checked that NATO troops had entered the Donbas.
Its popularity and permanence over time are also due to the intervention of various actors close to the Kremlin who have contributed to its dissemination on social networks. It has been widely disseminated and amplified by various actors, from Kremlin ministers to influencers.
How the narrative is amplified
Putin is the main proponent of the narrative that the invasion of Ukraine is a defensive war to ‘protect Russia’s sovereignty’. He has used this rhetoric to justify military mobilisation, fraudulent referendums and aggression against Ukraine, accusing the West and NATO of being truly responsible for the conflict. In his New Year’s Eve 2022 address to the nation, he accused the West of ‘lying about peace while preparing for aggression’ and ‘cynically using Ukraine as a means to weaken and divide Russia’.
His foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has also claimed that the US has created a coalition of almost all European NATO and EU member states and is using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia.
In March 2022, the Russian Defence Ministry said that the US was developing ‘ethnic biological weapons‘ in Ukraine to target ethnic Slavs, such as Russians. It was amplified by the Russian news agency TASS.
In October of the same year, the ministry published photographs supposedly proving that Ukraine was building a dirty bomb. But in fact, the photos show something else entirely. Deutsche Welle verified: that the shared images turned out to be old ones of Russian nuclear power plants and smoke detectors in Slovenia.
The impact of these disinformation narratives on public opinion: polls show that they have an effect
Even with contradictions and conflicting messages claiming that a country like France or Lithuania has sent troops to Ukraine or that countries are tired of financially supporting war refugees, these narratives are permeating society and are part of both foreign disinformation outside Russia and domestic disinformation at home, having effects on both sides according to surveys.
This is demonstrated by a study by the Centre for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, a non-profit organisation that analyses conspiracy theories, disinformation and anti-Semitic narratives): 19 % of respondents in Germany agreed that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine was Moscow’s reaction to NATO provocations, claiming that it was left with no alternative. Another 21 per cent agreed ‘partly’ with this assertion, so that in total 40 per cent of Germans at least partially believed this narrative.
Another poll, this time taken in Russia by the Levada Center in 2024, Russia’s leading independent polling agency, targeted as a “foreign agent” by this country in 2016, stated that “two-thirds of respondents still hold the United States and NATO responsible for what is happening in Ukraine, and their conviction has increased over the year”. Also, two-thirds, (65%) blame the US and NATO countries for the deaths and the destruction in Ukraine, a percentage that has been increasing since the beginning of the invasion.
As Elcano Royal Institute researcher Mira Milosevich-Juaristi explained in an analysis published in 2017, one of the main messages of Kremlin-led disinformation is that Russia was threatened by the hegemonic and decadent West, which aspires to exclude it from the international order.
Before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, several hoaxes and misinformation spread across borders in the months and weeks leading up to the invasion. In late January, a month before the start of the war, following the deployment of Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian border and US warnings of Russia’s intention to invade Ukrainian territory, a video went viral in which the BBC allegedly warned of an imminent war between Russia and NATO and the danger of an air nuclear strike. Not only was it a hoax, but it was a fictional representation of an Irish company that had circulated years earlier, in 2018. It was debunked by other fact-checkers such as Reuters.
Already in early February a map of alleged NATO bases was circulated. It showed Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria and Ukraine. NATO explained that the map did not represent its bases around the world and that the dots that appear on it do not correspond to those that indicate the organisation’s presence in different countries on maps on the NATO website.
In Ukraine, also just before the start of the war, a video went viral showing soldiers in an underground station, claiming to be NATO troops, who were already in Kyiv. However, it was a video recorded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2015.
Ukraine is running out of resources, the West is withdrawing aid: the destabilization strategy
At the same time as we are seeing a widespread disinformation campaign about alleged direct attacks by Western countries on Russia, there is sometimes disinformation to the contrary, pointing out that countries are tired of financially supporting war refugees or the country itself.
One example is the content that circulated last September claiming that Sweden was “prepared to pay 30,000 euros to every Ukrainian migrant who decides to leave the Scandinavian country voluntarily”. StopFake denied this. While it is true that this is a measure proposed by the Swedish Ministry of Migration and Asylum that was intended to increase the figure from 3,000 euros to 30,000 euros in 2026, it is intended for migrants who are dependent on state social support due to unemployment or low income, but not for those who have “a residence permit under the mass migration directive and come from Ukraine”, as the ministry’s website explains.
At other times, such misinformation indicates the cessation of military support to Ukraine and support to other countries in conflict instead. One example is the hoax that circulated in Georgia pointing to the cessation of French aid to Ukraine and support for Armenia instead. As Georgian fact-checker Myth Detector explains, France signed military cooperation agreements with Armenia in 2023 and, in June 2024, a contract was signed for the supply of artillery systems, however, this does not exclude military aid to Ukraine. In countries such as Venezuela, it was reported that the US had stopped supporting Ukraine, as reported by the fact-checking organisation EsPaja.
While most hoaxes go in the same direction, claiming that the West is attacking Russia, sometimes content appears that indicates that certain countries support Russia. This is the case of the images of planes in the skies over Marseille, France, with the flag of the country that circulated with messages suggesting that it was the flag of Russia, which has the same colours but in a different order. As explained by the fact-checkers of La Silla Vacía in Colombia, the images, from 8 May, correspond to the celebration of the arrival of the Olympic flame in that city, as part of the Olympic Games 2024 to be held from July in Paris, in which the planes painted with the French flag and the colours were inverted due to the perspective. It was also verified by other fact-checkers such as DPA or AFP Factual.
Another misinformation that forms part of the counter-narrative is the video that circulated in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, of a plane taking off with claims such as ‘the Bolivian government announces the sending of more than 3,000 military troops to Russia’s ally‘. As Chequeado explained, the Bolivian government did not send military troops to participate in the war and the original images corresponded to a military parade for the anniversary of the Bolivian Armed Forces in October 2013.
All of this content can be contradictory to the prevailing narrative that the West or NATO is accusing Russia, and can even be seen as a lack of commitment to consistency with the objective of these disinformation campaigns, reducing their effect, according to an article published by RAND in 2016. These contradictions can be part of the strategy itself and a tactic to ‘generate uncertainty and ambiguity’. By constantly shifting narratives, “Russian propagandists keep their opponents off balance and create a fog that masks the truth“, explains the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in a report in 2023.
From the identification of NATO soldiers in Donbas in 2018 to the disinformation campaign about the death of Colombian soldiers
One of the disinformation campaigns of recent months, aimed at undermining Western countries’ support for Ukraine, is related to soldiers who are going to help Ukraine fight on the front lines.
Disinformation “about the number of foreign mercenaries and the countries they come from”, says a study on disinformation campaigns in the Ukrainian war, “is part and parcel of a much broader disinformation campaign that Russia has
been conducted in a systematic and coordinated manner since the beginning of its military operations in Ukraine”.
In 2018, disinformation was already circulating claiming that three NATO soldiers had been found dead in the Donbas, for which there was no evidence, as verified by StopFake. In 2024, the narrative is still current. Images of foreign volunteers fighting in Ukraine have been used to reinforce this narrative, presenting the conflict as a fight between Russia and NATO, rather than a war against Ukraine.
Despite the years of circulation, the strategies used to spread these hoaxes are always the same, according to the content analysed by the organisations involved in this project:
● Allegations without evidence: that Ukraine uses foreign soldiers’ organs for transplants is one piece of disinformation that has gone viral in both Ukraine and Colombia.
● Misrepresentation of reality: Ukrainian soldiers die because they are absent-mindedly playing online casino games, says one disinformation content circulating, attributing this data to the US Institute for Military Studies, which has not commented on it. The Center for European Policy Analysis (ECA), as explained by the Lithuanian fact-checkers Delfi, warned of addictions such as gambling, alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, and claimed that “there are no official statistics”, nor do they link this to the deaths. We have also seen claims that a NATO general was killed by a missile attack in Ukraine, when in fact he died of natural causes in Belgium.
● Real images from other conflicts as if they were from Ukraine: in recent years we have seen disinformation content such as photos of coffins of British soldiers who died in Afghanistan being circulated as if they had died in the war in Ukraine, or photos of a farewell ceremony with 13 French soldiers who died in Mali being circulated suggesting they had died in Ukraine.
One of these recently launched campaigns, featuring soldiers from other countries as the protagonists of the disinformation, aims to dissuade international fighters from joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as EFE Verifica explained in a recently published investigation.
This investigation has been carried out following a methodology that includes a scale of risk values that points out if the content is part of a disinformation campaign, according to the following criteria: channels where the disinformation has been disseminated, countries in which it has circulated the same disinformation content, platforms on which it has been shared and identified narratives.
Who participates in this project?
This collaborative project, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), aims to improve the technological capabilities for the detection, analysis and classification of disinformation of fact-checking organisations in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Led by Maldita.es Foundation (Spain), the project has the participation of: StopFake (Ukraine), Media Development Foundation (Georgia) and Delfi (Lithuania); while allowing interconnection with other Latin American organisations: Chequeado (Argentina), La Silla Vacía (Colombia); EsPaja (Venezuela) and Animal Político (Mexico) for the study of the circulation of disinformation.
How do we know that content is circulating at the same time in several countries?Maldita.es Foundation has designed a centralised system that acts as a repository through which fact-checkers from Ukraine, Georgia, and Lithuania, in addition to Maldita.es, can send the content they receive through their respective chatbots or that which they identify on the internet, under the methodology established for this project. If the content circulates in one or more countries, an alert is sent to the rest of the countries so that they can check if the disinformation is circulating in those countries and, if so, they indicate it in the shared system. Just because disinformation has been seen in a country does not necessarily mean that the fact-checking organisation publishes the verification, as it may not have been viral enough.
