Someone Said That the Referendum in Crimea was Legitimate

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“Delegation from the US calls Crimea Referendum expression of the will of the people”.

So the headline ran in a news story published earlier this week by the Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti.

Does this mean that the US is now moving towards recognising Crimea as a part of Russia? Probably not. What it means that someone from the US visited Crimea and said that the 2014 referendum in Crimea was legitimate. In this case, the person RIA Novosti claims to be quoting is an American lawyer and member of an NGO group visiting the peninsula. The visit was also highlighted in reporting by Sputnik.

Now is this disinformation? Not if we define disinformation narrowly as saying something untrue. It is not unlikely that this American visited Crimea and that she is correctly quoted (although we should still be sceptical: Russian state-controlled media do not shy away from using mistranslations to distort and sometimes even completely change words uttered in a foreign language).

The question is if the story is relevant for a large news agency whose materials are used and quoted by many respected international media. If not, then RIA Novosti makes itself guilty of information manipulation, a term e.g. used in a recent report from two French government think tanks.

The trick is similar to the many cases when Russian media use Western commentators with questionable background in the role of experts to say things that fit into the Russian state media narrative.

Further reading:

From objective reporting to myths and propaganda: The story of RIA

Useful experts in Russian media

Little green men: the annexation of Crimea as an emblem of pro-Kremlin disinformation

“Vous êtes malhonnête, Monsieur!”

Figure of the Week: 50

Disinfo Quiz: The Elections in Tula

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Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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