The Russian propaganda press has rolled out on the internet in recent days a new fake subject, this time about a supposed discovery of Russian researchers: a new “super-mineral” that would have a huge value and would even surpass gold. Articles about “Kola Ashcroftine” began to appear everywhere in the Russian propaganda “ecosystem”, and even some Romanian news sites fell into the Kremlin’s trap, almost entirely adopting the claims which, upon closer inspection, are blatant and obvious falsehoods but well packaged in “scientific” form texts.
Websites from Romania that have taken up the subject have used as their main source the principal propaganda site from Belarus, belonging to the Belarusian broadcasting. In the article, the propagandists claim that “experts”, without specifying exactly who they are, have “estimated the market value of the material at 145 dollars per millimeter, substantially more than the current price of gold”.
When we start to look more closely at what the real discovery is, things change, and the propaganda becomes evident. The source of the initial fake: Russian state press websites – Sputnik, RBK, Ria and other “sources” that redistribute these fakes have rapidly spread cloned articles everywhere, including on social networks.
Subsequently, the article was picked up by other websites within the “second-hand ecosystem” of Russian propaganda: sites from Turkey and Vietnam that strongly contributed to the rolling out of the subject on social networks. In Romania, the main source of dissemination was the Belarusian state press. From there, several websites picked up the information, translated it from English, and published it with the exaggerated initial headlines.
But what is Kola Ashcroftine, in fact?
Detecting Russian propaganda and its mechanisms can become simple and intuitive if you understand the “recipe” by which it operates. Propagandists often use a real subject, take advantage of the fact that it is difficult to understand for someone who lacks expertise or is not initiated in the field, and then use pseudoscientific language to promote exaggerations, falsehoods, or inventions.
In this case, it’s about an incipient research of some Russian geologists who have found a possible new mineral with a structure and complexity similar to that of ashcroftine.
Ashcroftinul-Y was discovered at the beginning of the last century in Greenland and bears the name of a famous mineral collector from Great Britain: Frederick Noel Ashcroft.
Details, HERE