Disinformation Review

disinfo review

Pro-Kremlin Disinformation Keeps Ignoring Basic Facts on Syria

EU sanctions on Syria have been a favourite target of disinformation from Russia and pro-Kremlin media to discredit the EU’s action in and policy towards Syria. This week we devote the Disinformation Review largely to disinformation on Syria, EU policies and the sanctions regime.

July 09, 2020

Facebook Uses Ukrainian Nazis to Fight Russia, and Other Absurdities

It is sometimes refreshing to highlight how absurd, even laughable, pro-Kremlin disinformation can be. This week we take a look at some particularly outrageous cases.

July 02, 2020

Throwing Darts to See What Sticks

This week’s cases take us on a frenzied ride through topics that have been preoccupying the pro-Kremlin media over the last several weeks: coronavirus, protests, historical revisionism, MH17, Ukraine, NATO. Disinformation to suit every possible palate.

June 25, 2020

An Anti-American Bandwagon

This week, the pro-Kremlin media’s focus on the US shifted from disinformation about the racial injustice protests to fabricated accusations of other American misdeeds around the world.

June 18, 2020

Crisis (Non-)Management, Pro-Kremlin Style

We are celebrating 200 issues of the Disinformation Review! This week’s topics: racial injustice protests and a second wave of coronavirus disinfo.

June 11, 2020

Exploiting Crisis and Denying Responsibility

While the world mourns America's suffering, the pro-Kremlin media is cynically exploiting the protests – pushing very different messages for audiences in the US and at home.

June 04, 2020

Back to Basics: Ukraine, Revisionism, and Russophobia

As the world cautiously begins to adjust to the new realities of post-quarantine life, the pro-Kremlin media is adjusting as well – and returning to familiar territory.

May 28, 2020

The Belarusian Approach to the Outbreak

Belarus’ defiant attitude towards the COVID-19 outbreak has caught the world’s attention. A particular Belarusian brand of disinformation involves the claim that the Belarusian opposition deliberately and on instructions from "The West" is attempting to spread the virus.

May 21, 2020

Capitalising on the Coronavirus Conspiracist Frenzy

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to monopolise public life around the world, conspiracy theories about the virus continue to gather steam – and pro-Kremlin media are eager to jump on the bandwagon.

May 14, 2020

The Disinformation Review is EUvsDisinfo’s weekly newsletter. Issued every Thursday, it summarises the main pro-Kremlin disinformation trends observed across the disinfo cases collected throughout the week, and includes our latest news and analysis. It is available in English, Russian, and now German (as of October 2019).

Since its launch in November 2015, the Review has tracked the evolution of pro-Kremlin disinformation across a collection of more than 6,500 cases in 18 languages. These cases, together with their disproofs, are contained in our public database – the only searchable, open-source repository of its kind. All issues of the Disinfo Review are also chronologically archived on this page.

While the Review is written specifically for a public audience, it is an important resource for experts and policy makers as well. Over the years, it has been referenced and quoted by political leaders, ministries, think tanks, and journalists throughout Europe and beyond.

To get the Disinformation Review straight in your inbox, subscribe here for English and here for Russian. You can also stay up-to-date on our work by following EUvsDisinfo on Facebook and Twitter.

What makes a pro-Kremlin disinformation case?

The EUvsDisinfo database is dedicated to identifying and exposing disinformation narratives originating in pro-Kremlin media across the EU and Eastern Partnership countries. As of 2019, our monitoring capabilities also expose disinformation spread in the Western Balkans and the EU’s Southern neighbourhood.

In identifying disinformation cases, we focus on messages that provide a partial, distorted, or false depiction of fact-based reality, in line with established pro-Kremlin narratives. We use two criteria to determine whether a disinformation message is included in the database: 1) the message is verifiably false or misleading, according to the publicly available factual evidence and 2) the message originates in a Kremlin-funded media outlet or other information source that has clear links to the Russian Federation. Due to an EEAS policy change in 2018, we no longer include European outlets in the database. Read more about EUvsDisinfo’s terminology here.