The United Kingdom and the United States are cracking down on channels and websites that are peddling false and misleading reports allegedly sponsored by Russian intelligence, according to reports.
It was reported last week that sanctions would be imposed on the notorious Russian-based troll factory, Internet Research Agency (IRA). Meanwhile, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review, two other alleged disinformation websites, were also targeted, noted reports. All three outlets were named by the British authorities.
The Saint Petersburg-based IRA has previously been caught for paying £500 a month to Russian-based bloggers to flood the internet with pro-Putin comments on chat forums, social media platforms and the comment sections of western publications. However, it was also claimed that Russian intelligence promotes worldwide news and analysis websites that favour the Kremlin’s view of the Ukraine invasion, which Putin named as a “special military operation”.
Sanctions have been imposed by the US treasury on the three outlets named by the British authorities.
Additionally, it has also taken action against at least nine other countries, five of whom have been sanctioned since the invasion of Ukraine. The Strategic Culture Foundation, which touts itself as a “forum for thorough analysis on Eurasian and global issues, is one of the websites sanctioned by the United States”.
The website has cited Russian claims of a “covert project” to turn Ukraine into nuclear power. One of its authors also claimed the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, which took place in March 2018, was likely to be a British “false flag” operation to demonise and delegitimise Kremlin.
However, the website is described by the American authorities as a Russian-registered online newspaper run by the country’s foreign intelligence service. According to American Treasury, the website has been promoting conspiracy theorists, giving them a bigger platform to spread disinformation “while trying to obscure the Russian origin of the journal so that readers may be more likely to trust the sourcing”.
However separately, since September 2020, the website’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have been disabled.
The news outlets – SouthFront, NewsFront, and InfoRos – have all been sanctioned by American officials for their alleged association to the Strategic Culture Foundation and all of them are linked to Russian intelligence.
Meanwhile, last week, media regulator the Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom in the United Kingdom, has cancelled the licensing of the Russian state-backed news station RT to broadcast in the country.
However, the Ukrainian government has been subjected to disinformation campaigns, including a bogus video of President Volodymyr Zelensky, urging his soldiers to lay down their rifles that surfaced online last week.
Separately, a video claiming that the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers collided, amid a fierce battle went viral. Soldiers carrying the Russian and Ukrainian flags are seen confronting each other in the less-than-a-minute video. But later it was found that the video is authentic and shot in 2014, specifically at a time when Russia annexed Crimea.
RT was one of the numerous state-run news sites that backed up government accusations that Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014. But the plane was shot down by Russian-backed separatists, most likely by accident, according to overwhelming evidence.
Thousands of people liked and shared articles from RT supporting the news on Facebook, with one post receiving nearly 6,000 likes and 4,800 shares.
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