Fertile soil for pro-Kremlin propaganda

This Tuesday, the Finnish Institute for International Affairs published an in-depth report about pro-Kremlin disinformation on the conflict in Ukraine, entitled Fog of Falsehood.

The study presents several case studies as to how the Kremlin’s narratives were transferred into various EU Member States, including the Visegrad countries.

Pro-Kremlin outlets doubled since 2014
The study as well as other sources shows that the pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign is intensifying in Central Europe where pro-Kremlin outlets and social media pages targeting local audiences proliferate.

Hungarian news site VS.hu recently revealed that in Hungary, the number of online outlets that support the official Russian narrative more than doubled since 2014.

The piece highlights that besides the expansion of radical right-wing media, entrepreneurial hoax sites (e.g. Aktívblog.net, Meteon.org, Titkolthírek.hu) and openly pro-Putin portals (e.g. Hídfő.ru, Oroszhírek.hu, Orientalista.hu), the migrant crisis has also brought about a boom in the number of websites specialised in exploiting anti-immigrant sentiments (e.g. Napimigráns.com – “Dailymigrant.com”).

Poland not receptive of Russian meta-narratives
A similar picture arises in the neighbouring Czech and Slovak Republics, the Finnish analysis shows.

Echo24.cz compiled a list of 42 Czech and Slovak news sites spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation last year. These web portals, so the authors of the study, “have been established hand in-hand with the escalation of the Russian-Ukraine conflict in late 2013 and 2014”.

In Poland, on the contrary, the study observes that “in general, public perception in Poland is not receptive of Russian metanarratives” and that Russian narratives failed “to penetrate and affect the interpretation and assessment of the events in Ukraine as presented in opinion pieces or editorials”.

The Hungarian site “Daily Migrant” has four sections: news, humour, media and terror. Its news section, pictured above on a recent weekday, features stories about Europe’s home-grown terrorists, thus linking migration to terrorism.