propaganda Archives

Pro-Kremlin Online Rhetoric Thrives in Orban’s Hungary

Posted on April 20, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

After Viktor Orban’s re-election as Hungary’s prime minister for a fourth consecutive term, pro-Russian propaganda continued to spread online in the country despite the Budapest government’s official support for the EU’s imposition of sanctions on Moscow.

Two such cases are documented in this latest bi-weekly review of online violations compiled by BIRN’s monitors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.

Meanwhile, journalists have been targeted online in Serbia and Romania, while recordings of conversations published online highlight political frictions and cases of alleged graft in Bosnia and North Macedonia

Ukraine war misinformation spread in Hungary

Despite voting for EU sanctions and showing humanitarian support for refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, Hungary continues to show some reluctance to fully join the European bloc in condemning the Russian invasion.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, after his fourth electoral victory on April 3, cited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as his opponent in his victory speech, confirmed he will not take any action against the Russia-founded International Investment Bank and insisted that Russia’s Rosatom would continue building a new nuclear power plant in Hungary.

Given this context, it is clear why pro-Russian propaganda is so widespread in Hungary, where pro-government media support Orban’s ruling party Fidesz.

Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary and President of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) Zsolt Semjen (L) and the head of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyas hold a press conference after closing the polling stations for the general election and national referendum on the child protection law in the Balna convention center in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/SZILARD KOSZTICSAK

On April 4, thousands of Hungarian Facebook users started sharing pictures of a man covered in Nazi tattoos, claiming that he was the “deputy police chief of Kyiv”. However, the man, whose name was Artem Bonov, did not appear in the list of employees on the Kyiv Police website and was found to be a well-known far-right activist instead.

On April 8, two separate cases of misinformation and propaganda were recorded in Hungary. In the first of the two, several Hungarian-language Russian propaganda sites and their Facebook pages spread false information that there was no massacre in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and that the reports of civilian casualties were fake.

Some articles that included a video of carnage in Bucha falsely claimed that one of the dead bodies lying on the street was actually moving, that there was evidence that the massacre did not take place, and that recordings made after the recapture of the town were staged.

In the second case, following the adoption of the fifth package of sanctions targeting the Russian and Belarusian economies by the European Parliament, the Hungarian State news agency MTI reported the news as if Fidesz MEPs had not voted in favour of the sanctions.

However, despite a claim by Fidesz party MEP Kinga Gál, who said on Facebook that her fellow Fidesz MEPs voted overwhelmingly against the proposal to impose an embargo on gas, oil and nuclear power from Russia, the EU proposal was supported by Fidesz MEPs.

Journalists targeted in Serbia and Romania

Journalists continue to be verbally attacked by pro-government media and political figures across the region, and the beginning of April saw several incidents in Serbia and Romania.

People walk past a puddle reflecting an election billboard of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade, Serbia, 04 April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

On April 1, Verica Marincic, a journalist from the town of Indjija in Serbia who works for the IN Medija website, reported that she received serious threats via Facebook.

Marincic said she believes that the threatening messages were connected to an article she published about the behaviour of a local priest who was taken into custody some days earlier after he refused to pay for some items from the local Lidl store.

In another case on April 5, sports journalist Milojko Pantic said his YouTube channel, which also hosts political content critical of the government led by the Serbian Progressive Party, had been removed from the platform without explanation.

Pantic said he believed that the shutdown of his channel was probably related to the release on the YouTube channel of his show about Serbia’s democratic failings, which was uploaded before the parliamentary and presidential elections on April 3.

Meanwhile in Romania, Reporters Without Borders said in a report on its website that press freedom remains vulnerable as “the government’s vision of journalism and freedom of expression encourages censorship and self-censorship”.

The media watchdog added that “mechanisms for funding the media are, in many cases, opaque or even corrupt, and editorial policies are subordinated to the interests of owners, who often use them as propaganda tools”.

In one recent example of the troubled media environment in the country, well-known investigative journalist Emilia Sercan said on April 4 that she was targeted after she published material claiming that Romanian prime minister Nicolae Ciuca plagiarised part of his doctoral thesis.

“In the course of a single month, I was targeted in three separate incidents – threats, defamation and intimidation – all related to my work as an investigative journalist. According to the evidence in my possession, one of the defamatory acts was carried out with the complicity of a certain state institution’s employees,” said Sercan.

She also said she was sent some revealing pictures of herself, taken about 20 years ago by a former fiancé, from an unknown person on Facebook Messenger.

In response to the incident, the International Press Institute and other media freedom NGOs issued an appeal to the Romanian authorities calling for a swift and independent investigation.

Politicians targeted in Bosnia and North Macedonia

The Bosnian political scene remains deeply divided and fractious. In one recent example of this, the Klix.ba website published a recording on which Jelena Trivic, the vice-president of the Party of Democratic Progress and a member of the Republika Srpska National Assembly, is heard threatening former councillor Ivan Begic.

On the recording, which was made ahead of local elections in 2020, Trivic tells Begic, who served on Banja Luka City Council, that he “will be buried”. Klix.ba says the recording has been authenticated, but the Party of Democratic Progress claimed that it was an edited version of the original tape.

Former prime minister of North Macedonia Nikola Gruevski (C) leaves the Budapest-Capital Regional Court after his extradition trial in Budapest, Hungary, 27 June 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ZOLTAN MATHE

In another incident involving recordings of private conversations published online, this time in North Macedonia, two audio recordings of a conversation allegedly between former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and businessman Orce Kamchev were released by an unknown source on April 3.

In the conversation, voices appearing to be those of Gruevski and Kamchev discuss a court case in which they are both involved. The voice that is claimed to be that of Kamchev says that he gave a statement saying that Gruevski had nothing to do with buying plots of land on Mount Vodno for 1.2 million euros. The authenticity of the recordings has not yet been confirmed.

Fake news, cyberattacks and other online violations

Incidents of disinformation and unverified claims, as well as cases of cyber fraud, continue to be a problem in many countries’ digital environments.

In Bosnia, a spoof article saying that Apple has created wedding rings that allow couples to monitor their spouses’ movements went viral after it was published by the Zanimljivo satirical humour website. The article was reposted as genuine news even though the fact-finding site Raskrinkavanje reported that it was not intended to be taken seriously.

Another case saw several online media and news websites in North Macedonia post unverified claims about the death of Croatian handball player Denis Toth, who is believed to have died as a result of injuries sustained in a fight after leaving a nightclub in Skopje. The unverified claims sparked a lot of speculation on social media in the country about the reason for Toth’s death.

Police were forced to intervene in North Macedonia after the reappearance of a notorious Telegram group entitled Public Room, a forum for sharing explicit photos of young women. The latest iteration of the group, in which photos, videos, information from social networks and phone numbers of girls and women in the country were posted, had close to 1,500 members. After a few days, the police intervened and the group was closed down.

Finally, the National Directorate for Cyber Security in Romania said there had been a massive increase in cyber-attacks against state institutions and private companies in the initial days of the war in Ukraine. It claimed that Russian IPs had been involved in reconnaissance attacks on Romanian state and private companies in the energy sector.

Election Hostilities Shake Serbia and Hungary

Posted on April 6, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Political clashes, smear campaigns and attacks on political opponents dominated the election campaign period in Serbia and Hungary in the second half of March.

Ahead of general elections held on April 3 in both Hungary and Serbia, online incidents of political rivalry and nationalist propaganda were also recorded. Hungary also saw an increase in cases of homophobia in the lead-up to the controversial referendum on LGBTQ+ gay rights.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, meanwhile, media and TV reporters received threats and other offensive gestures from political figures in the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, the main Bosnian Serb party. In North Macedonia and Romania, where nationalist rhetoric is on the rise, more clashes occurred between ruling parties and political opponents.

Elections in Hungary and Serbia stimulate tensions

National elections were held on April 3 in both Hungary and Serbia. In Serbia, the parliamentary election coincided with presidential and local elections in 12 municipalities, including the capital, Belgrade.

Hungary went to the polls to elect a new parliament and cast votes in a controversial government-initiated referendum on LGBTQ+ rights.

Serbia’s main opposition parties, according to earlier polls, had little chance of beating the ruling Progressive Party-Socialist Party coalition and struggled to be heard.

In the event, President Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, secured an easy victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections.

After Vucic’s main presidential rival, Zdravko Ponos, a retired general and former diplomat, appeared on the political talk show of Serbia, “Utisak Nedelje” (“Impression of the Week”), some voters speculated that Ponos might snatch away the votes from the SNS and represent a break with the past conduct of the opposition.

Incumbent Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic speaks during his pre-election rally in Belgrade, Serbia, 31 March 2022. Serbia will be holding general elections on 03 April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

In a case recorded on March 18, the YouTube channel of Nacionalna Televizija Happy (National TV Happy), a privately-owned TV channel in Serbia with national coverage, removed a video from its morning programme that featured a heated political debate involving the political analyst Boban Stojanović.

In the show, Stojanović, criticising the economic policy of the ruling SNS, asked his interlocutors if they knew how much salaries had risen since the fall of former leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, noting that the current salaries in Serbia were the lowest ever, since then.

In Hungary, tensions and partisan attacks ahead of the parliamentary elections were no less fierce than in Serbia.

Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party again won the election, and he is about to start his fourth successive term as prime minister.

In his victory speech, Orban criticised Brussels bureaucrats and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling them “opponents”.

[Zelensky has criticised Hungary’s refusal to unequivocally condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or allow lethal weapons destined for Ukraine to cross Hungary.]

Smear campaigns and attacks on political opponents, which most likely will continue in the post-election period, were Fidesz’s trademark in the run-up to the elections.

On March 15, Fidesz’s political rivals were targeted by the Hungarian state news agency MTI which took a photo of an opposition rally before the demonstration had actually begun.

The photo showed far fewer people than were later present at the event. Several newspapers, on the basis of this photo, said that very few people attended the demonstration, and some reported wrongly that the planned march was cancelled for this reason.

In another episode on March 22, the government sent an election campaign letter using the email addresses people had submitted to register for COVID vaccinations. The email, which attacked both the EU and the opposition, read that, “some Brussels leaders want to punish Russia at all costs, and they also want punitive measures that would place an additional unpaid burden on the shoulders of European citizens, including Hungarians”.

Justice Minister Judit Varga, echoing the government’s anti-EU campaign, also claimed incorrectly that Hungary did not receive any EU help in “stopping migration” in a post published on Facebook last March 23.

Homophobia surges ahead of disputed referendum

The Fidesz-sponsored referendum on LGBTQ+ rights, which coincided with the date of the general elections, also prompted numerous violations in the Hungarian digital space.

A ballot paper is stamped by an election official at a polling station during the general election and national referendum on the child protection law in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/Zoltan

Although the referendum failed to become binding, as less than half of those entitled to vote cast ballots, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in the country will likely remain under threat following Fidesz’s landslide election victory.

Following a case in early March, in which the szentkoronaradio.hu website published a list of names and photos of teachers who have supported LGBTQ+ rights, other incidents have occurred.

On March 23, CitizenGO Hungary, a local branch of a far-right advocacy group founded in Madrid, and the website vasárnap.hu, a portal linked to the junior ruling KDNP party, published homophobic articles linking homosexuality with paedophilia.

Vasárnap.hu also launched an appeal for people to go to the polls in the referendum, claiming that laws on the protection of children in Hungary were inadequate, and that the demands of LGBT rights groups were unfounded.

Reporters threatened and insulted in Bosnia

In 2016, after Bosnian Security Minister Dragan Mektic’s hearing in court, BIRN confirmed the opening of an investigation into Pavlovica Banka, a bank based in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, concerning a loan that Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik took out to buy a villa in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

After several years, the case continues to occupy space in the public debate and online.

Moilorad Dodik, Chairman of Bosnian Presidency (L), and Zeljko Komsic (R), member of Bosnian Presicency, attend a press conference after a meeting with Slovenian President Borut Pahor (not pictured) in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 05 March 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

On March 22, after giving a statement to the Prosecutor’s Office about his purchase of the villa, Dodik showed his middle finger to journalists from his car. After the picture of the offensive gesture went viral, Dodik later apologized, saying he had over-reacted after he recognized a television team that he thought was leading a media hunt against him.

Media journalists were also targeted in another case recorded on March 26, when Rajko Vasić a member of the main board and former secretary of Dodik’s SNSD, threatened on Twitter to blow up the television building of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Radio Television, BHRT.

BHRT owes large debts to the tax administration of Bosnia’s Federation entity. For these reasons, its accounts are blocked, and it faces complete suspension.

Commenting on its difficult financial situation, Vasić, said he would “blow up” the TV building “if others were ashamed to do so”. In response, Damir Arnaut, an MP in the Bosnian parliament and a member of the Party for a Better Future, filed a complaint with the authorities, accusing Vasić of terrorism.

Fake news targets North Macedonian officials

After last year’s political crisis, partisan attacks still mark the current scenario in North Macedonia. In Romania, similarly, clashes between the ruling party and its opponents mixed with a rise in populist and nationalist rhetoric dominate both institutional and online domains.

On March 25, two North Macedonian officials, public prosecutor Fatime Fetai and Justice Minister Nikola Tupanchevski, were targeted with fake news published in several news portals regarding their trip to Palermo for a football match between Italy and North Macedonia.

Aleksandar Trajkovski (L) of North Macedonia celebrates after scoring during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 play-off qualifying soccer match between Italy and North Macedonia at the Renzo Barbera stadium in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 24 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/CARMELO

Online media and various journalists claimed that Fetai and Tupanchevski were there on a state-sponsored trip and that their costs were covered by North Macedonia’s Football Federation. Both denied the claims and stated that they personally paid for their trips.

In Romania, parliament on March 14 passed a controversial law making incitement of political-based discrimination a crime. A person found guilty of this may now be sentenced from six months to three years in jail.

It was the second time the law came before parliament. An earlier version was turned back by the Constitutional Court, after a complaint launched by Romania’s President. This time too, a constitutional complaint against the new version of the law was initiated by the Union to Save Romania party. “It’s obvious that this law can give authorities the idea of opening criminal cases against political opponents. But the old law could also have been used in such a way,” commented Diana Hatneanu, a lawyer at the Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania – the Helsinki Committee.

Propaganda and Hysteria Flourish in Russo-Ukrainian War

Posted on March 21, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The beginning of March saw numerous digital violations, mainly related to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has electrified the digital environments in the region, and pro-Russian propaganda, misinformation and fake news are skyrocketing. The conflict has also inspired hysteria and panic among the public in North Macedonia and Romania related to energy fears.

Cybercrimes and online fraud confirmed their endemic nature, with Hungary and Croatia remaining at the top of the list of countries where such violations occur most often. Routine digital violations continued to weigh on the Serbian, Macedonian and Bosnian digital environments.

One-sided war narratives, disinformation, and fake news

The Ukraine conflict continued to provoke a wave of disinformation and fake news across the region. And the hostilities will, most likely, continue to have a huge impact on the online environments for some time. Pro-Russian propaganda, partisan manipulative episodes and massive disinformation campaigns are now at a high level in several countries following the outbreak of the war.

Due to the rapid increase in incidents of fake news, disinformation and pro-Russian propaganda related to the war, Romania started to implement some tech countermeasures.

One is the development of an IT platform to identify pro-Russian propaganda narratives on social media resulting from the collaboration between several NGOs and the Department for Emergency Situations.

However, the initiative has also attracted criticism. This is because the government has proposed a number of key terms to be associated with the algorithm which, if applied, would equate cases of “corruption” or “incompetence” related to the Prime Minister or President to pro-Russian disinformation.

In Hungary, on March 5, a pro-Russian Facebook page Orosz Hírek (‘Russian News’) published a video with Hungarian subtitles that has been watched more than 587,000 times.

In the footage, Ukrainian MP and former Socialist Party leader Ilya Kiva claimed that Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, was on the run. However, the news was false. President Zelensky has not left the country or the capital, Kyiv.

In North Macedonia, a case recorded on March 2 saw a Twitter user spread panic by claiming officials were recruiting soldiers for the war in Ukraine.

Fake news, misinformation and disinformation on the war have circulated widely in Croatia as well. On March 1, following a social media story that went viral, celebrating a Ukrainian fighter pilot for shooting down six Russian planes, a number of Croatian media published fake news about a so-called “Ghost of Kiev”, which turned out to be just an urban legend about a fearless Ukrainian pilot protecting the skies above Kyiv. Many users of the social network on March 7 shared a photo from a Serbian film that was falsely attributed to the war in Ukraine.

Bosnia and Herzegovina reported a case of exploitation of the Ukrainian conflict for political ends, on March 8.

Commenting on the war, the leader of the right-wing Dveri movement in Serbia and member of Serbia’s parliament, Boško Obradović, told Belgrade television that it would be “justified for the Serbian Army to get involved” in Bosnia, “to protect Serbs in [the Bosnian Serb entity] Republika Srpska, if aggression is launched against them”.

He said this Serbian military intervention would be “an obligation, both moral and historical and every other”. The video went viral, and many media published it on their pages.

Panic in North Macedonia and Romania over energy

The Ukrainian conflict has also triggered energy panics in many countries that rely heavily on gas and raw materials from Russia.

Data from the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators shows that North Macedonia, Bosnia and Moldova are the most dependent countries in Europe on Russian gas.

North Macedonia, which receives gas from Russia via the TurkStream pipeline through Bulgaria, imports 100 per cent of its national gas from Russia.

This has led to episodes of mass hysteria and panic.

A man drives his motorbike next to the screen with the new prices of petrol and diesel at a petrol station of Lukoil in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia, 02 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI

On March 3, fake news on social media about shortages prompted thousands of North Macedonians to queue at gas stations. The rumours were refuted by authorities, which said there was no crisis in the supply of oil and oil derivatives.

In Romania, images of Bulgarians queuing up for petrol and buying huge quantities of cooking oil caused a panic over alleged shortages of gas there as well.

First, Romanians started panicking over buying cooking oil, and later, they formed massive lines outside gas stations.

Adrian-Ionuț Chesnoiu, Romania’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, reassured the population, stating: “We have enough cooking oil stored in our warehouses. We have no shortage. There are a lot of oil factories in this country, we aren’t dependent on imports.”

Cybercrimes and online fraud remain endemic in many environments

Online fraud, scams, data breaches and cybercrime continue to occur frequently in many countries.

Hungary and Croatia remain at the top of the list of countries where such violations occur most frequently, with 37 and 26 cases of computer fraud recorded in our annual report, “Online Intimidation: Controlling the Narrative in the Balkans”.

A woman walks in front of Headquarter of Erste Bank in Zagreb, Croatia, 24 January 2017. Photo: EPA/ANTONIO BAT

The digital environment in Serbia saw challenges on digital rights and freedoms in the area of information security. A popular private bank warned its customers and citizens about phishing email fraud. One of the fraudulent emails had “Payment from Russia” written in the subject field.

Another episode involved singer Ana Djuric “Konstrakta”, who said her official Instagram and Facebook accounts had been hacked. Having recently won the national competition to represent Serbia at this year’s Eurovision, she has become very popular.

On March 8, the National Cybersecurity Institute of Hungary warned that several organisations had received email requests that appeared to be from the European Commission, on the “Situation at the EU’s borders with Ukraine”, but which contain harmful links and malware file attachments.

The Croatian digital environment was also affected by two different cases of computer fraud, both recorded on March 6.

In the first case, Erste bank, the third largest bank in Croatia, warned its customers about a fake internet page in its name. The bank told users not to input any personal data on the page. Similarly, RBA bank warned of fake SMS messages, which are “trying to discredit the bank and its stability”. The bank reported the incident to the Interior Ministry.

In Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia, routine digital violations

Threats to independent journalists and free media, political friction driven by a climate of instability, and ethnic tension, are just some of the factors behind routine violations.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer (C), members of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Sefik Dzaferovic (L) and Milorad Dodik (R) arrive for their meeting, during Nehammer’s visits in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

Miljko Stojanovic, Danas newspaper’s correspondent from Zajecar, received threats via Facebook because of an article he wrote about a Ukrainian taking refuge in Serbia. Serbian police found the person suspected of threatening Stojanovic.

On March 11, during an official visit to the UK, North Macedonia’s Defence Minister, Slavjanka Petrovska, was targeted by hate speech from users, posting derogatory remarks about her looks on Facebook and Twitter.

In Bosnia, ethnic and political tensions continue to provoke online violations. On March 7, Milorad Dodik, the Serbian member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency and head of the main Bosnian Serb party, the Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, received threats via social media. A video in which a masked man offered a million euros for Dodik’s murder was published on the social network TikTok.

Fake allegations also spread on social networks and online media about possible riots at a rally of the right-wing Serbian nationalist Ravna Gora Chetnik movement in Visegrad, eastern Bosnia, on March 13.

Online media claimed riots were to be expected because of the arrival of some people from Bužim. However, several associations from Bužim denied the rumours, saying that no one wanted such incidents in these times.

EU Takes RT and Sputnik Off Air, But Not to Universal Acclaim

Posted on March 2, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Commission published its sanction to take two of Russia’s state propaganda outlets off the air in the Official Journal on Wednesday, effectively giving national media regulators the power to silence them. Some worry that the EU is overreacting.

It was on Sunday that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first announced that the Kremlin-backed RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik would be banned from broadcasting across the EU.

“We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war,” von der Leyen said. “We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

Three days later, after discussions with member states and the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA), the details were published of the media sanction, which will apply to transmission and distribution through satellite, cable, online video sharing platforms, and applications both old and new.

“In view of the gravity of the situation, and in response to Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine, it is necessary… to urgently suspend the broadcasting activities of such media outlets in the Union,” the Commission said. “It shall be prohibited for operators to broadcast or to enable, facilitate or otherwise contribute to broadcast, any content by the legal persons, entities or bodies in Annex XV, including through transmission or distribution by any means such as cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications, whether new or pre-installed.”

Even before that, accessing RT and Sputnik content in countries in Central Europe and across the rest of the bloc was becoming increasingly difficult. On February 25, two days before von der Leyen’s announcement, Poland’s media regulator had already deleted a number of Russian channels from the register of permitted TV services in the country. On Tuesday, Facebook and Google’s YouTube slapped their own bans on RT’s content.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was still possible to access from the Czech Republic RT in Russian, though not Sputnik’s Czech site.

This move by the EU took many by surprise and has not been universally welcomed.

In a rather testy interview with the BBC on Monday, Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell Fontelles said the move was not a case of censoring media or free speech, but to stop the dissemination of “lies and toxic information”. This is not about stopping “free information flow but about massive disinformation flow,” he went on.

While few would dispute that most of RT and Sputnik’s output is drivel and barely disguised Russian propaganda, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said it fears the effects of this spiral of censorship on freedom of expression in Europe.

“This act of censorship can have a totally counterproductive effect on the citizens who follow the banned media,” EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez said in a statement. “In our opinion, it is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest.”

While several western journalists working for the Russian media outlets have resigned in light of the invasion, others call the move to ban them anti-democratic, a blatant case of censorship and worry about the impact on people’s jobs at a difficult time.

“Today a darker day dawns at the EU for the freedom of speech and the press,” Vaggelis Kotrozos, administrator of Sputnik Greece, told BIRN. “The attempt to silence a media outlet is anything but democratic but refers to authoritarian regimes. Russia, which is accused by the Western allies of being an ‘authoritarian’ country, has never resorted to such practices except in countermeasures to similar practices of Western countries, e.g. RT licensing in Germany.”

“The Greek office of Sputnik takes all the necessary measures for its smooth operation and the securing of all the jobs against the attempt to silence it,” he added.

Others worry that the banning of the Russian channels feeds into a wider panic about misinformation and disinformation. “RT is by no means the only target for state censorship – and if it’s taken off the air, it will not be the last,” predicted Fraser Myers, deputy editor of Spiked in the UK.