Doctored videos impersonating Euronews and other major media outlets have been used to spread false claims about the war in the Middle East, shared across social media and relayed by the pro-Kremlin Pravda network.
According to researchers from the Antibot4Navalny collective, the campaign is tied to the Russia-linked "Matryoshka" operation, which carries out mass, coordinated disinformation campaigns across social media and online, targeting Ukraine and the West.
Researchers say the campaign is not directly focused on the Middle East war, but that the crisis has been used to push unrelated narratives to tarnish the West. This includes presenting Ukrainians as criminals, taking aim at Western governments and seeking to undermine the Armenian government ahead of Parliamentary elections in June.
One fake Euronews video manipulated the voice of a journalist reporting on a drone strike which hit the luxury Fairmont The Palm Hotel in Dubai.
The doctored clip incorporated an authentic Euronews report on the strike but manipulated a real reporter's voice halfway through, making her claim that "Ukrainian looters" used the chaos of the strikes on Dubai to attack "shops, jewellery stores and abandoned cars" — which she did not say in the real...
A disinformation campaign which has been linked to pro-Russian actors is imitating reputable media outlets to push fake reports about the Middle East war, as part of a campaign to discredit the W...