The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Moldovan diplomat on Tuesday over “media reports” about the deployment of Ukrainian F-16 fighter jets on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. In fact, these fakes began to be spread on pro-Russian Telegram channels at the end of July. We will explain in detail how they work.
Inventing the fake
This task was assigned to Russian Senator Vladimir Djabarov. On July 26, 10 days before President Zelensky announced the arrival of F-16 fighters in Ukraine, Djabarov began to be quoted in the Moldovan version of Sputnik (blocked by the authorities for propaganda and fakes) and on Telegram channels of the same network.
“As I understand it, Moldova is considered not only as a hub for civil and military aircraft, but also as a base or landing airport for F-16s, which will soon appear as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Myasorubka writes. and Moldovan channels Vagon.
Spreading the fake
The narrative about the “basing of F-16 aircraft on Moldovan airfields” began to spread again on August 4, when Ukraine officially announced that the aircraft promised by their Western partners had arrived.
RIA Novosti and Sputnikk inform: “The first American F-16 fighter jet, which was seen in the sky over Odessa, left for Moldova.” The other channels in the network continue to spread the “news” exactly: here “Republica Gagauza”, here “Myasorubka”, and here “Vagonul Moldovenesc” and “Komsomolskaya Pravda”.
Disinfo sources claim that last year they broke away from the socialists’ control and began actively promoting the actions of the fugitive oligarch Shor and pro-Kremlin narratives, including the activities of the ANO Eurasia (in connection with Shor), which regularly takes schoolchildren and young people to Moscow.
To understand what other Telegram channels are connected to the fugitive oligarch and Russian propaganda, you just need to check Shor’s channel in the Tgstat tool.
Over the past month, Shor’s posts have been cited or mentioned more than 1.5 thousand times: almost 40% of such mentions are from a selection of 2 to 11 channels – this suggests that there is a special network that regularly reposts Shor to make his posts visible and attract subscribers.
They mainly mention channels whose main audience is in Russia, including: “Moldavian Vagon”, “Meat Grinder News”, “Pridnestrovets”, “Gagauz Republic” and many others.
I wrote about the last two in this analysis. They were the ones who spread fake news that Foreign Minister Mihai Popsoi had assured Ukraine that Moldova would extradite Ukrainians of military age who had fled.
“Pridnestrovets” and “Gagauzskaya Respublika” are two examples of Telegram channels with an inflated audience, which were ostensibly created to cover events in these regions, but in fact their main purpose is to spread Russian propaganda, disinformation and fake news.
Moreover, the analysis showed that at least 10 channels that reposted Shor’s publications more than 4.5 thousand times raise questions about the quality of the audience. Their ERR (engagement by views) index is below 15% and sometimes even below 5%. Experts believe that such low figures are a sign of an inflated audience.
Recent example
On the eve of the autumn elections and the European referendum, there are more and more such channels. For example, 2 months ago the Stop EU Moldova channel appeared on Telegram, the authors of which claim that the EU is forcing Moldova to buy expensive “European electricity” (despite the fact that Chisinau buys 80% of electricity from Transnistria with 60 MWh), in the EU Moldova will face a rise in inflation, and 2024 will be the year when “Romania will swallow Moldova”.
Disinfo analyzed the channel’s publications: out of over 4 thousand subscribers, there are only 200 real subscribers or even less. Since June 30, its coverage has increased sharply, by dozens, but at the same time, the publications are reposted very rarely and only by pro-Russian channels (not only from Moldova).