The Council today decided to impose additional restrictive measures against 21 individuals and 6 entities responsible for Russia’s destabilising actions abroad.
The Council has also broadened the scope to allow the EU to target tangible assets linked to Russia’s destabilising activities, such as vessels, aircraft, real estate, and physical elements of digital and communication networks, as well as transactions of credit institutions, financial institutions and entities providing crypto-assets services that directly or indirectly facilitate Russia’s destabilising activities.
Furthermore, in light of the systematic, international Russian campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts aimed at destabilising neighbouring countries and the EU, the Council will now have the possibility to suspend the broadcasting licences of Russian media outlets under the control of the Russian leadership, and to prohibit them from broadcasting their content in the EU.
In line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the measures agreed today will not prevent the targeted media outlets and their staff from carrying out activities in the EU other than broadcasting, e.g. research and interviews.
Today’s listings include Viktor Medvedchuk, a former Ukrainian politician and businessman who, through his associates Artem Marchevskyi and Oleg Voloshin also listed today, controlled Ukrainian media outlets and used them to disseminate pro-Russian propaganda in Ukraine and beyond. Through secret financing of the “Voice of Europe” media channel - also listed today - and his political platform “Another Ukraine”, Medvedchuk has promoted policies and actions intended to erode the legitimacy and credibility of the government of Ukraine, in direct support of the foreign policy interests of the Russian Federation and disseminating pro-Russian propaganda.
A Moscow-based disinformation network named “Pravda” — the Russian word for "truth" — is pursuing an ambitious strategy by deliberately infiltrating the retrieved data of artificial intelligence chatbots, publishing false claims and propaganda for the purpose of affecting the responses of AI models on topics in the news rather than by targeting human readers, NewsGuard has confirmed. By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information. The result: Massive amounts of Russian propaganda — 3,600,000 articles in 2024 — are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda.
How Russian propaganda challenges Switzerland's neutrality, using disinformation to sway public opinion in the Ukraine war.
China's ICCs reshape global propaganda via targeted messaging, social media, and influence networks to amplify the Communist Party's voice globally.
How Doppelganger, one of the biggest Russian disinformation campaigns, is using EU companies to keep spreading its propaganda – despite sanctions.
#Fact-checking
Russian media outlet RT ran the bot farm to pump out disinformation via 968 Twitter accounts, the US Justice Department says.
Covert propagandists have already begun using generative artificial intelligence to boost their influence operations.
The Putin regime conducts large-scale propaganda not only through its state media but also through “useful idiots,” who focus on demonizing the US, EU, and NATO and have right- or left-wing views. New “multilingual international media” have emerged that write in a way that suits the Kremlin and spread pro-Russian narratives and disinformation, replacing Russia Today and Sputnik, which have received a ban in Europe.
How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation
The Nordic country is testing new ways to teach students about propaganda. Here’s what other countries can learn from its success.
TAG highlights four case studies involving Russian IO tied to the Internet Research Agency and Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.
This work is the result of a collaboration with EU DisinfoLab an independent non-profit organization focused on tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the EU.
EU DisinfoLab has during the past three months been investigating a large disinformation campaign targeting western audience with pro-Russian propaganda. While our partner has focused on the actual disinformation being spread, Qurium has looked into the technical infrastructure in use to better understand how the campaign has been setup and operated.
The complete report from EU Disinfo Lab can be found here: Doppelganger.
Below follows the results of Qurium’s digital forensics investigation and a list of more than 50 domains used in the disinformation campaign.
The broadcast of the Football World Cup 2022 qualifier game between Wales and Ukraine on Sunday was interrupted in Ukraine by a cyberattack that targeted OLL.TV...
