Kremlin-linked media are conducting a widespread disinformation campaign in Europe to worsen the COVID-19 pandemic by sowing fear, creating panic, and generating mistrust about the response to the crisis, according to an internal report by the European Union’s diplomatic service.
“The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in western countries, specifically by undermining public trust in national healthcare systems — thus preventing an effective response to the outbreak,” said the nine-page report by the European External Action Service, the EU’s combined foreign and defense ministry, dated Monday and seen and quoted extensively by Reuters and the Financial Times.
The report states that “a significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremlin outlets regarding COVID-19 is ongoing,” which “is designed to exacerbate confusion, panic, and fear, and to prevent people from accessing reliable information about the virus and public safety provisions.” The diplomatic service concluded that “these efforts are in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies from within by exploiting their vulnerabilities and divisions.”
The Kremlin denied the allegations on Wednesday, pointing to a lack of specificity in the EU report.
“We’re talking again about some unfounded allegations which, in the current situation, are probably the result of an anti-Russian obsession,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Peter Stano, the European Commission’s lead spokesman for foreign affairs and security policy, told the Washington Examiner the report was “an internal working document that was not intended for publication,” so he could not comment on it directly. But he did confirm that “with the spread of COVID-19, we have seen flurry of info, myths, and disinformation about it — they are coming from various sources, not only from one, although disinformation efforts coming from Russia, linked to Russia, or to clearly pro-Kremlin outlets have noticeably picked up.”
The EU foreign affairs spokesman said “since the outbreak of the coronavirus and flurry of information and disinformation about it,” the EEAS ”has intensified the monitoring and analysis of information flows and their sources” and “publicly identifies, exposes, and raises awareness about coronavirus-related disinformation spread by Russian sources.” Stano said the EEAS works on this closely with the European Commission and EU countries and cooperates with international partners such as the Group of Seven countries, NATO, and Canada “to avoid that the situation is misused by others.”
There were 205,452 confirmed coronavirus cases around the world and at least 8,248 deaths tied to the infection as of late Wednesday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. There have been 81,102 confirmed cases in China, where the World Health Organization believes the virus originated, and 3,230 confirmed deaths there. The Chinese Communist Party has also been spreading what the United States has stressed is disinformation about the coronavirus, including claims that it originated with the U.S. military.
The WHO said last week that Europe had become the new “epicenter” of the outbreak, and the U.S. surgeon general and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both said, “Europe is the new China.” There were 31,506 cases and 2,503 deaths in Italy, at least 13,910 cases and 623 deaths in Spain, an estimated 10,082 cases and 27 deaths in Germany, and 7,661 cases with 148 deaths in France, as of late Wednesday morning.
In the U.S., there were at least 6,519 cases, which resulted in 115 deaths.
EU digital economy spokesman Johannes Bahrke said Wednesday that high-ranking EU officials “met representatives of online platforms, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft” earlier this month “to discuss the spread of disinformation around the outbreak of COVID-19 virus.”
The European Commission said that “in the wake of growing disinformation against EU values in recent years, the EU has worked to put in place a stronger and more strategic approach to communication.”
The EEAS report said the Russian strategy was to “deploy dozens of different and often contradictory narratives that are disseminated through official channels, as well as online and through social media.” The document said that “Russian state-linked false personas and accounts” already linked to disinformation efforts switched over to “pushing disinformation about the coronavirus in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French online.”
These “pro-Kremlin disinformation messages” aimed to “advance a narrative that coronavirus is a human creation weaponised by the West” and “advance apocalyptic stories, blame capitalists for trying to benefit from the virus, and emphasise how well Russia and Putin are dealing with the outbreak,” the report said.
The leaked EEAS report echoes Senate testimony from the head of the State Department’s anti-disinformation efforts.
“We’ve seen adversaries take advantage of a health crisis where people are terrified worldwide to try to advance their priorities,” Lea Gabrielle, the director of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, said. “So we’ve been watching the narratives that are being pushed out — false narratives — around coronavirus. Unfortunately, we have been able to assess that accounts tied to Russia — the entire ecosystem of Russian disinformation — has been engaged in the midst of this world health crisis.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation concluded that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
Mueller’s report, released last year, described how Russian military intelligence hacked the Democratic National Committee and provided thousands of stolen emails to WikiLeaks for dissemination, but did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
The special counsel also described how Russian troll farms carried out disinformation campaigns on social media.
