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EU Presses Montenegro to Pull Plug on Russian Media

Posted on March 10, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Union urged Montenegro on Wednesday to suspend broadcasting of Russian Today and Sputnik in line with the bloc’s restrictive measures on Russia.

On March 1, Montenegro said it had joined European Union sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war, but most of the restrictive measures, including a ban on Russian media, remain on hold.

“We urge the government to … provide a legal basis for the competent national authorities, including the Electronic Communications Agency, AEM, to be able to take the necessary decisions,” the EU press release said.

On March 2, the EU, which Montenegro wishes to join, suspended the broadcasting of Sputnik and Russia Today in Member States, accusing them of spreading disinformation and manipulating information as an operational tool of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrel, said that Russian state-owned media were essential to bringing forward and supporting Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

Montenegro also committed itself also to ban Russian overflight of its airspace and access to its airports and to ban transactions with the Russian Central Bank and several other banks.

But so far, banning Russian flights is the only measure actually confirmed by the government.

On March 3, the Minister of Public Administration, Digital Society and Media, Tamara Srzentic called on the government to suspend Russia Today and Sputnik broadcasts.

The proposal was postponed reportedly because it was suspected that such a decision would not have enough support from within the coalition government.

“Montenegro will follow EU measures against Russia, and therefore restrictions related to stopping the spread of disinformation and propaganda through the media, which are recognized for publishing false news,” Srzentic told the daily Vijesti on March 3.

According to Montenegrin law on international restrictive measures, ministries propose measures but the government has to officially confirm them before implementation. After confirmation, the government sends a list of measures to state institutions, which must implement them.

By law, the Electronic Communications Agency can prohibit broadcasts if media promote hatred or endanger state security.

But the Association of Montenegrin Journalists on March 3 opposed the ban, likening it to censorship. “Banning the Russian media in Montenegro is wrong and w expresses fear that the domino effect will lead to censorship of freedom of expression throughout Europe,” it said.

Russia enjoys significant support in multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Montenegro, especially among the large Serbian community which make up just under 30 per cent of the population.

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.

Poland to Open Investigation into Belarus Hijacking of Ryanair Flight

Posted on May 24, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Polish Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Monday ordered an investigation into the forced landing of a Polish-registered airplane by the Belarusian authorities and the subsequent removal of an opposition activist who enjoyed protected status in Poland.

Poland is on the frontline of the EU’s diplomatic war with Belarus and its authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who together with scores of Belarusian officials are under EU sanctions, including travel bans and assets freezes, imposed following the disputed August 2020 election and subsequent crackdown on protestors.

Poland has been vocal in its support of the Belarusian opposition, offering protection to exiles and providing Lukashenko critics with a house in Warsaw to use as their headquarters. The Lukashenko regime has retaliated by targeting members of the Polish minority in Belarus: in the last few months, several Poles in Belarus have been arrested, including Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and member of the Association of Poles in Belarus.

The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was crossing Belarusian airspace when the authorities there, reportedly on Lukashenko’s orders, used a false bomb alert and a fighter jet to force the flight carrying Roman Protasevich to land in Minsk, where security services boarded the plane and arrested the opposition activist.

The incident, which has caused outrage across Europe and was described by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as “an unprecedented act of state terrorism”, prompted prosecutors in Poland to open an investigation linked to two articles in the Polish criminal code.

One concerns the use of deception or threat of direct violence to take control of an aircraft, which in this case was officially registered in Poland, giving a legal basis for the investigation as the plane is considered Polish territory. The other concerns the unlawful deprivation of freedom of Protasevich, who last year was given protected status in Poland, allowing him to move freely inside the EU, as well as the other passengers.

The 26-year-old journalist is one of the founders of Telegram channel NEXTA, which played a prominent role in the organisation of protests against Lukashenko throughout the second half of last year. At least part of NEXTA’s content had been uploaded from Poland, which hosts a sizeable community of Belarusian exiles, including the channel’s founders and other opposition leaders. Protasevich was no longer living in Poland.

“I have asked the European Council President to expand tomorrow’s European Council agenda and discuss immediate sanctions against A. Lukashenka regime,” Prime Minister Morawiecki tweeted on Sunday night. “Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.”

Protasevich faces charges in Belarus of inciting public disorder and social hatred, carrying a jail sentence of up to 12 years if convicted. He is also on a list of terrorists compiled by Belarusian authorities and, if officially charged with terrorism, could face the death penalty. The terrified young man reportedly pleaded with the airline crew not to land the plane, saying he would face the death penalty if it did. Belarusian security operatives were reportedly on the plane, which was eventually allowed to fly to its destination in Lithuania after several hours.

The Czechs have joined its neighbour Poland in protesting the actions of the Belarusian regime, though there has been no official reaction yet from Hungary, Slovakia or a joint Visegrad Four statement. However, Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian MEP from the opposition Renew group wrote in a Facebook post: “The detention of the Belarusian activist is unacceptable – Europe must act!… The Hungarian government and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó must stop their harmful practice of vetoing joint EU action. Instead of supporting dictatorships, the Hungarian government must finally stand up for the protection of our democratic values.”

COVID-19 Provides New Material for Russian Anti-EU Disinformation

Posted on September 22, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Russian disinformation in the Western Balkans and ‘Eastern Partnership’ countries has taken “a new turn” with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, portraying the European Union as overwhelmed and unable to support its neighbours, Romanian expert Nicolae Tibrigan told BIRN in an interview.

Tibrigan, a researcher at the Bucharest-based Laboratory for the Analysis of Informational Warfare and Strategic Communication, LARICS, said Russian anti-Western propaganda had fuelled conspiracy theories about the origins of the novel coronavirus and criticism of the EU’s efforts to support the countries of the Western Balkans and six former Soviet republics in the so-called Eastern Partnership.

“One of the main goals of pro-Kremlin disinformation in the two regions is to create and deepen mistrust between the EU and its partners,” Tibrigan told BIRN in an email interview.

“In the context of the health crisis, these disinformation efforts are taking a new turn, in which the EU is systematically portrayed as overwhelmed by the situation and unable to respond to the needs and calls of its eastern neighbours.”

Russia trying to undermine EU via Balkans

Giving the example of a report by Russian state-controlled agency Sputnik from January suggesting the virus originated in a NATO or US laboratory, Tibrigan said that “online sources with ‘alternative content’ and social networks propagated these narratives as indisputable facts, each time adapting the message to the internal context of each state.”

“Local actors were encouraged by the pro-Kremlin media to multiply the message to contribute to a real regional campaign of misinformation, propaganda and spread of conspiracy theories on the health crisis: secret laboratories explain coronavirus outbreaks, while outbreaks of coronavirus would automatically prove the existence of secret laboratories.”

Supporters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wave flags and show a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the ‘Future of Serbia’ campaign rally in Belgrade, Serbia, April 19, 2019. Photo: EPA/Andrej Cukic

In the Western Balkans, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic was “artificially linked to another hypothesis – that the EU would ‘turn its back’ on the Western Balkans, as it has done with other European countries.”

Tibrigan said Russia sees the Western Balkans as “a vulnerable periphery of Europe,” one which presents “an opportunity to undermine the EU and NATO by exploiting local vulnerabilities.”

Sputnik’s Serbian-language outlet, based in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is the main source of Russian disinformation in the Balkan region, Tibrigan told BIRN, while citing other outlets such as Russia Beyond the Headlines, which translates into Serbian and Macedonian, the newspaper Argumenti i Fakti [Arguments and Facts] and the ‘Ruska Rec’ newspaper supplement.

He said there was a “lack of political will” in the Western Balkans to combat Russian disinformation, while Serbia and North Macedonia have become not just consumers but “exporters” of Russian propaganda.

Tip of the iceberg

In the Eastern Partnership states – Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia – Russian propaganda is more direct, Tibrigan said and does not use one particular state as a platform as Serbia is used in the Western Balkans.

Moldovan President Igor Dodon (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) take part in the flower-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, Russia, June 24, 2020. Photo: EPA/GRIGORY SYSOEV

Disinformation has become an essential tool in trying to thwart the European path of these states, where Russian is widely spoken or understood, he said, alongside direct military intervention and the perpetuation of frozen conflicts.

“These propaganda narratives manage to penetrate the information ecosystems of the EaP [Eastern Partnership] states, with the public being ‘warned’ about the ‘lack of sustainability and stability’ of their Western partners,” said Tibrigan.

In Moldova, he said, the government and president actively disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda, while authorities have not taken any measures to limit the influence of Russian-language social networks.

Notably during the pandemic, the Moldovan Orthodox Church, canonically subordinate to the Russian Patriarchy, has echoed the main Russian propaganda themes.

The Kremlin has earmarked 1.3 billion euros for media spending in 2020 is 1.3 billion euros, compared to the shoestring budget of the EU’s anti-propaganda unit, East Stratcom, of five million euros.

Of the Russian 1.3 billion, 325 million will go to state-controlled Russia Today, which broadcasts in roughly 100 countries around the world, Tibrigan said.

“And that’s just the visible part of the iceberg, given that we can’t estimate the exact value of the propaganda operations carried out by proxies or secret service entities.”

Facebook Shuts Russian Propaganda Network ‘Based in Romania’

Posted on September 3, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook’s security department has shut down several accounts belonging to a publication that presents itself as an independent global news organisation primarily based in Romania, “for violating our policy against foreign interference”.

The accounts were operated by people associated with the Russian government who used fake accounts and spread anti-Western propaganda.

Their use of environmental concerns and pacifist arguments to discredit Western democratic institutions has been described as reminiscent of the tactics used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which funded front organisations in Western countries to influence public opinion against democratic governments.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA),” the social network said in its August security report.

The network, which gravitated around the news website Peacedata.net, targeted audiences from “on the left of the political spectrum”.

It posted global news and comment on current events “relevant to left-leaning communities”, including social and racial justice issues in the US and UK, NATO and EU politics, alleging Western war crimes, corruption and environmental issues.

One of the articles shared by Peacedata charged the British government with creating “a myth of a migrant crisis to distract from its failures”.

Another article published on Facebook by the same network accused France of following neo-colonial practices in its former African colonies. The third example given by Facebook officials of content distributed in the disabled accounts had the title: “Boogaloo Movement: USA Far Right is Growing Thanks to Donald Trump”.

Another item published by Peacedata.net called the Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya “a Western regime change puppet”.

The network consisted of 13 accounts and two Facebook pages with a following of 14,000. According to the social network, it was in the “early stage” of building a wider audience.

It produced content in English and Arabic and “focused primarily on the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt, in addition to other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.”

They also “recruited unwitting freelance journalists to write on particular topics”.

Peacedata.net website is still on air and has rejected Facebook’s accusation that it is a tool of the Kremlin in a lengthy statement that calls The New York Times and The Washington Post “brainwashing machines”. It also called Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg an “adversary of freedom and democracy” who “proudly walks alongside such monstrous figures as Donald Trump”.

NATO to Help North Macedonia Combat Fake News About Virus

Posted on April 15, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The US ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, on Tuesday in Washington said North Macedonia, which joined the alliance this year, will receive similar assistance to other member countries in dealing with fake news from Russia, North Macedonia’s state-owned MIA news agency reported.

“The alliance expects more info from Skopje on setting up such a team in North Macedonia, aimed at preparing media in the country on how to deter disinformation campaigns from Russia,” MIA quoted Hutchison as saying.

She added that a lot of fake news was being spread in North Macedonia about the coronavirus and that NATO assistance was needed to deal with it.

The ambassador called on NATO allies to combat disinformation on the coronavirus coming from Russia – and also from China.

“There are false reports that they [Russia and China] are sending assistance, there are false reports that the virus emerged from Europe or the United States. This is absolutely false and we are trying to respond with facts,” she told the press briefing.

Russia has strongly opposed NATO expansion into the Balkan region. Montenegro became the 29^th member state in 2017 despite open opposition from Moscow, and has since been on the receiving end of cyber attacks assumed to come from Russia. For some years it has hosted a team of American cyber experts who are helping the fight against cyber threats.

North Macedonia became NATO’s 30^th member in March this year. Hutchison remarked that the country has been a target of disinformation from Russia ever since it applied for membership, adding that these threats have continued since it joined NATO.

Russian Court Rules Facial Recognition Doesn’t Violate Privacy

Posted on March 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court ruled on Tuesday that the facial recognition system launched on January 1 does not violate the privacy of citizens, paving the way for a 105,000-strong camera network to stay.

The decision was a blow to activists and opposition politicians who argued that the surveillance operation was illegal, Reuters reports.

The case against Moscow’s Department of Technology, DIT, was filed by lawyer and activist Alena Popova and opposition politician Vladimir Milov of the Solidarnost party in January.

They sought to ban use of the technology at mass events and protests and to delete all stored personal data previously collected.

“This ruling shows there are no legal defences for facial recognition complaints,” Popova’s lawyer, Kirill Koroteev, told the media.

The DIT is in charge of managing the surveillance network in Moscow. According to reports, it has spent 3.3 billion roubles, about $53.3 million, installing cameras and licensing facial recognition software to bring the network online.

During the court proceedings the system was on, with the Russian authorities using it to ensure that people who were ordered to remain at home or at hotels under the coronavirus quarantine are doing so.

Meanwhile, the DIT website says it uses the video surveillance system in crowded areas to “ensure safety”. It says that video footage is deleted within five days of an incident, unless a request by the public or law enforcement is made.

Following the first court hearing on January 31, rights watchdog Amnesty International said facial recognition systems posed a threat to Russian citizens’ privacy and human rights.

“In the hands of Russia’s already very abusive authorities, and in the total absence of transparency and accountability for such systems, it is a tool which is likely to take reprisals against peaceful protest to an entirely new level.

“It is telling that the Russian government has provided no explanation as to how it will ensure the right to privacy and other human rights, nor has it addressed the need for public oversight of such powerful technologies,” Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty’s Russia Director, said.

This is the second time that Popova has filed a lawsuit against the DIT concerning the video surveillance system.

She was previously fined for participating in a protest in Moscow in 2018, and claims that she was only identified with the use of facial recognition.

Last November, the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow refused to examine her claims that her right to privacy was undermined by the establishment of Moscow’s video surveillance system and the lawsuit was dismissed.

The face recognition system covering the whole Moscow underground transportation network is set to be fully operative by September 1.

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