Over the weekend, five coffins were found next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, with the text “French soldiers brought from Ukraine”. In France, it is considered clear that it was yet another Russian operation to sow discord and fear among French citizens.
Russia has been spreading disinformation to different countries for decades. France has recently become possibly the main target of fake news. There are many reasons for this.
The most important reason is probably that the French president Emmanuel Macron has taken a leading role in EU countries in supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s war of aggression. It is believed that Macron will soon announce the sending of French soldiers to Ukraine to train the Ukrainian army.
Russia has hit hard against Macron and his wife. Brigitte Macron is, according to fake news spread on social media, a transsexual, i.e. born a man, says East StratCom, which works against fake news on its EUvsDisInfo website.
In any case, East StratCom has observed that Russia wants to maintain a strong masculine ideal, which is associated with e.g to Vladimir Putin. As a counterweight to this, the European Union is portrayed as a weak organization led by homosexuals.
In January, an openly homosexual became prime minister of France Gabriel Attal. On Pravda, a multilingual news site close to the Russian government, Attal was referred to as the “gay prime minister” of France.
When it was revealed that Attal previously had an affair with the current French foreign minister by Stéphane Sejourné with, host of Russian state television Sergei Kiselev started spreading the claim that these gay men in power are going to ban talking about heterosexual relationships in EU countries.
Speaker of the Lower House of the Russian Parliament Pyotr Tolstoy said France was ruled by perverts. The Russian propaganda channel RT started spreading Tolstoy’s words, reports EuvsDisinfo.
French army be discounted in fake news. Some arguments according to which France already has soldiers in Ukraine, which France has denied.
Threats and discord
In the summer, the Olympic Games are organized in Paris, in which Russian athletes are only allowed to participate as neutral athletes, not as representatives of their countries.
The information technology giant Microsoft published on Sunday the report, according to which an organization Microsoft uses the name Storm-1689 has been established in Russia for fake news about the Olympics. The newspaper tells about it The New York Times.
Storm has, among other things, spread fake news about the Palestinians’ intention to carry out a terrorist attack on the Games, and that a large part of the spectators who have already purchased tickets have returned their tickets due to fear of terrorism.
Last summer, the world reported that a huge bed bug problem was spreading in Paris. The fake news is suspected to be fabricated by Russia.
France has been trying to get Russia’s disinformation under control for a long time. In February, Foreign Minister Sejourné said that the authorities had uncovered at least 193 websites that had been set up to spread Russian propaganda.
According to Sejourné, Russia’s goal is to destroy European unity and exhaust democratic forces. Russia also wants to manipulate information in such a way that the line between real and fake news becomes blurred.
Euro elections in sight
The European Parliament elections will be held on Sunday. The far right is predicted to succeed in the elections. This benefits Russia, which has supporters on the right.
To support the right-wing, Russia feeds fake news that reinforces the worldview of right-wing thinkers. CNN’s news channel according to the US cyber security company Sentinel and the EU-based EU DisinfoLab have revealed a Russian online organization that has received the name “Dobbelgänger” (Finnish double being).
The organization creates fake news that appears to come from well-known European news sites such as Bild or the Guardian. The news topics are especially related to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine or climate policy.
Fake websites have claimed, among other things, that the EU is about to ban the repair of old cars or that the EU is about to impose “climate closures” similar to corona closures in cities.
Fake news about Ukraine emphasizes Russia’s superiority, and that supporting Ukraine would therefore be pointless. Sanctions against Russia are said to cause more harm to the citizens of EU countries than to Russia
This is also related to the disinformation spread by Russia about renewable energy. The EU is trying to get rid of Russia’s fossil energy as much because of the war as because of global warming. The trend is to reduce the income of the Russian state.
The EU’s anti-disinfo organizations have found, among other things, news in which it is claimed that wind turbines spread toxic pollution. Environmentalists have also been called “ecofascists” who take away the decision-making power of ordinary people.
– Russia is looking for confrontation and strife, and any current problem that it can take advantage of. The goal is to make people fight each other. They don’t care about the climate, said the head of the European Digital Media Observatory research institute in an interview with CNN Paula Gori.
Russia denies being guilty of any kind of disinformation spreading. However, the EU has imposed sanctions against it for this reason as well, most recently in May.
Sources: Reuters, AP