Christo Grozev, CEO of the distinguished investigative journalism organization Bellingcat, opens up on Twitter about the ways in which Russia feeds fake news into the mainstream.
The CEO of the investigative journalism network Bellingcat has just visited Finland by Christo Grozevin according to which Russia feeds fake news to the European and Russian media.
On Sunday, Grozev tweeted an example of the way in which the Russian intelligence exercises influence on information in the West. In his tweets, Grozev presents one of the practices by which Russia feeds fake news to the Russian and European media by “washing” the news through several different publishers and sources.
Grozev focuses on Russian state media to RIA Novosti news (you will switch to another service), released online on October 29. According to the story, Poland is planning to conquer western Ukraine and hold referendums there. The narrative is familiar: the Eastern European NATO countries are being portrayed as aggressive neighbors who threaten Ukraine, Russia, Russia’s Kaliningrad or Belarus.
RIA Novosti’s story is based on Modern Diplomacy (you switch to another service) – platform dealing with foreign, security and geopolitics to publication (you will switch to another service). Modern Diplomacy describes itself as a “leading European opinion maker”, which also has a wide influence in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
According to Grozev, Modern Diplomacy seems relatively reliable: the editor-in-chief of the platform can be found in the Linkedin application, and the publication’s Twitter account has no stamp of, for example, governmental connections.
More: CEO of Bellingcat in Helsinki: Russian corruption administration sells information and works against itself
The site’s background influences can be seen directly from the end of the story about Poland, Grozev tweets. The story turns out to be a guest pen, behind which is an actor called International Affairs. By clicking on the operator’s link, you will be directed directly To the pages of the publication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (you will go to another service)where Modern Diplomacy is listed as a “collaborator”.
However, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not the original author of the publication either: it is a translation from Polish From Dziennik Polityczny’s story (you will switch to another service). So did the Polish media report that Poland is about to take over parts of Ukraine?
According to Grozev, only a web search with the name of the editor-in-chief of the website, Adam Kamiński, reveals suspicious facts.
Grozev directs to a few reports from Dziennik Polityczny. The Polish publication Dziennik Polityczny is the one doing investigative journalism in the Baltics of the Re:Baltica organization (you switch to another service)and a Polish investigative journalism website According to OKO.press (you will switch to another service) A propaganda source run by the Russian secret service. According to Re:Baltica, the Polish security authorities have unofficially confirmed this, but have not publicly offered any evidence.
The publication of Re:Baltica reveals that Adam Kamiński does not exist, and the person in the photo of Kamiński’s Facebook page is actually a Lithuanian orthopedist whose face has ended up on Kamiński’s website for one reason or another.
According to Grozev, through such recycling, Russia serves the claims of the Polish invasion to the Russian public as the opinion of European experts.
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