WASHINGTON — Andriy Taranov, a board member at the Ukrainian public broadcasting company Suspilne, was sitting in his office last month when he noticed a strange message running across the bottom of the television screen. It said Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, had announced a surrender.
Mr. Taranov was stunned because there had been no chatter about a surrender among reporters covering Russia’s invasion of the country. “There’s nothing like that in any journalist circle,” he remembered thinking. “It looks absolutely contradictory.”
The message was fake, he quickly realized. It had been planted on the chyron of Media Group Ukraine’s live broadcast by hackers.
Since Russia’s invasion began in late February, hackers have repeatedly broken into the social media accounts and broadcasting systems of trusted information sources in Ukraine, like government officials and prominent media outlets. They used their access to spread false messages that Ukraine was surrendering, sometimes using fake videos to bolster their claims.
And while there is no evidence that the misinformation campaign has had any discernible effect on the conflict, experts say the hackers’ intentions might not be to actually trick anyone. Instead, the hackers are most likely trying to erode confidence in Ukrainian institutions and show that the government and news media cannot be relied upon for information or to keep hackers out of their systems. The tactics mirror those used in other Russian...
Turkish base fake news in Armenia For several days, a video has been circulating on social media claiming that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan allegedly signed a “secret agreement” with EU ...