Shady Think Tanks, Anonymous Websites and Other Outlets Helping to Spread Russian Disinformation on Ukraine

US media is report­ing on how dis­in­for­ma­tion about the Ukraine con­flict is spread­ing wide­ly beyond Russ­ian state media by means of “shady think tanks, anony­mous web­sites and oth­er out­lets.” Accord­ing to an Axios report:

False nar­ra­tives sur­round­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine are increas­ing and extend far beyond the bounds of Rus­sia-con­trolled state media, accord­ing to new research from News­Guard first shared with Axios.

Why it mat­ters: Though Russ­ian state-media has faced wide­spread de-plat­form­ing, many shady think tanks, anony­mous web­sites and oth­er out­lets can eas­i­ly con­tin­ue to spread mis­in­for­ma­tion about the war.

• OneWorld.press, for exam­ple, is a web­site that bills itself as a “Glob­al Think Tank,” but does­n’t dis­close own­er­ship, fund­ing or con­trol. It con­tin­ues to reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish false­hoods sup­port­ing Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion and News­Guard notes that the site’s inter­net domain was reg­is­tered in Moscow.

By the num­bers: Mis­in­for­ma­tion about the inva­sion is on the rise, both in terms of the num­ber of false claims being spread and the amount of out­lets active­ly post­ing misinformation.

Read the rest here.

Since the begin­ning of the Ukraine con­flict, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has been exten­sive­ly report­ing on the grow­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the conflict.