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Shkruar nga Pamfleti
In parallel with the start of the war in Ukraine, Moscow has undertaken a large-scale 'operation' to spread disinformation that serves Russia. This has even been considered part of Moscow's arsenal against Europe. But who are the countries that were targeted, are Albania and Kosovo included in the list?
Russia's disinformation network primarily targets countries in Central Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, an analysis by the Bulgarian Center for Information, Democracy and Citizenship and Sensika Technologies showed on April 14.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the network has actively spread Russian disinformation as part of Moscow's arsenal against Europe, according to 'The Pravda Ecosystem: An Analysis of the Kremlin's Regional Disinformation Strategy.'
The authors analyzed 643,601 publications in 45 countries between December 2024 and March 2025, focusing on the Pravda disinformation network with over 190 websites.
The analysis showed that the majority of publications, 24.4%, were focused on the countries of the former USSR, followed by Central Europe (13.9%) and the Balkan states (11.9%).
The top 15 countries targeted by disinformation publications are Moldova, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Armenia, Lithuania, Georgia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Portugal, Hungary, Greece and Ukraine.
“The former USSR and the Balkan regions account for a disproportionately high percentage of publications,” the analysis noted.
Moldova, Latvia and Estonia, all from the former USSR, have the highest publication rates per person at 0.01125%, 0.0094% and 0.00728% respectively.
In terms of regions, the highest percentage of publications per person targeted the former Soviet states (0.00622%), the Balkans (0.00163%), and Central Europe (0.0015%).
"The data suggests a targeted focus on specific regions, potentially indicating coordinated disinformation campaigns," the analysis noted.
Publications targeting former Soviet and Balkan states account for 52% of all publications, despite representing a disproportionately small portion of the population.
"The intensity of publications per capita is up to 56 times higher in the most targeted countries compared to Western democracies, which indicates a sophisticated approach to shaping information environments in regions of geopolitical importance," the analysis states.
He added that these regions were of geopolitical interest to the Kremlin and disinformation efforts could have implications for democratic processes, social cohesion and regional stability.
The pages analyzed appeared to be fully automated, reposting content from Russian news sources, social media, and Telegram channels without original reporting.
“Forensic analysis by DFRLab links the operation to TigerWeb, a Crimea-based IT company with documented ties to the Russian occupation authorities and possibly to figures in the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin (including ties to businesses associated with oligarch Arkady Rotenberg),” the analysis states.
He added that by early 2025, the Pravda ecosystem had grown to several hundred news aggregators, 140 subdomains targeting over 83 countries, and content in dozens of languages.
"According to a March 2025 report, the Pravda Network has been engaging in 'LLM grooming' - deliberately targeting the internet with millions of articles across 182 domains in 12 languages that are primarily created for AI consumption, with the strategic objective of permanently embedding Russian narratives into the knowledge base of AI systems." /Adapted from Pamphlet by IntellNews/
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