The false narrative about the secret construction of a drone factory in the Republic of Moldova has been amplified in a coordinated manner by 13 Telegram accounts. According to the Center for Strategic Communication and Counteracting Disinformation (Stratcom), on October 16 and 17, they published 21 posts on this subject, without presenting evidence to support the claims.
Four of the involved accounts belong to Sputnik Moldova, and the rest are associated with it. About three hours after the first messages appeared, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zaharova, described Moldova as a Western anti-Russian testing ground, writes radiochisinau.md.
Stratcom maintains that the falsehood emerged against the backdrop of an increasing number of incidents involving Russian drones, which have violated the airspace of the Republic of Moldova. Between October 10-16, seven such cases were reported.
The institution warns that the narrative about the alleged drone factory falls within the messages concerning the “militarization of the Republic of Moldova” and aims to create confusion between false information and actual drone incidents. At the same time, qualifying these incidents as “hysteria” may diminish the population’s trust in official warnings regarding the security of the airspace.
The short interval between the initial messages and their amplification, the number of accounts involved, and the speed of propagation indicate, according to Stratcom, more of a coordinated amplification rather than a spontaneous reaction.