Washington (AFP) – A Russian missile smashed a Ukrainian apartment complex, killing dozens. Pro-Russian propagandists offered a slick counter-narrative that shifted the blame away from Moscow -- using pseudo fact-checking as a tool of disinformation.
Since the start of its invasion one year ago, Russia and its supporters have sought to aggressively distort Moscow's role in Ukraine with what experts call a highly potent weapon in its arsenal -- disinformation campaigns.
Global fact-checkers have debunked a blizzard of falsehoods that seek to deflect attention from Russia's potential war crimes or malign its opponent, a task made more complex by fictitious "fact-checks" that risk undermining trust in their own work.
Last month, at least 46 people were killed when a residential building in the city of Dnipro was struck by what Ukrainian officials and experts including the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said was a Russian Kh-22 cruise missile.
The battered nine-story building came to epitomize one of the deadliest single attacks in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
But a website called "War on Fakes" -- which disseminates what experts identify as Russian propaganda -- claimed in an "exclusive" that the building had been destroyed by a Ukrainian air defense missile.
Akin to professional fact-checkers, it used visuals with the word "fake" stamped across them in bold red letters, alongside open-source material including a dashcam video and a graphic...
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