Tag: hubeng

In April 2024, the Macedonian Medical Student Association (MMSA) announced on Facebook that the Faculty of Medicine of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (UKIM) in Skopje will host a lecture titled “The Path of Transitioning.” According to the post, the lecture was supposed to cover various aspects of gender-affirming care and medical services. The two speakers at the...

Social network posts claim the alleged closeness of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005) with Russia. Although Kuchma tried to sustain normal relations with Russia, his foreign policy was far from being pro-Russian, especially since the country officially expressed interest in becoming a NATO member state during his term. That’s why other claims suggesting that Ukraine was entirely pro-Russian at...

Тhe Russian Embassy in North Macedonia recently shared the documentary Donbas. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (2021) on Facebook. The documentary uses a common manipulation technique - presenting the historical sequence of events in a way that confuses the audience as to who “started it” the conflict. The film highlights the fire in Odessa in which pro-Russian activists died on...

Apart from internal, the Balkan region is exposed to external influences where disinformation is concerned but denying that disinformation is key for the protection of democracy. This was the conclusion of the first session of today’s conference “Defending Democracy in the Balkans: Safeguarding Information Integrity in a Digital Era”, on the occasion of marking International Fact-Checking Day. Filip Stojanovski from...

We need to become more aware of disinformation in our physical and digital worlds. Disinformation undermines trust in institutions, and therefore permanent fight against various actors who spread it is required, with fact-checkers playing the most important role. These were the conclusions from today's conference titled "Defending Democracy in the Balkans: Safeguarding Information Integrity in the Digital Era", marking International...

The video shared in the post is not new, i.e., it was not recorded after Sweden's accession to the NATO Alliance, but before that. To that end, Sweden's approach to supporting freedom of choice, protecting all citizens, and fighting discrimination is not linked to NATO membership, which the country pursued to achieve additional stability, publishes Vistinomer.mk. We are republishing...

Saharan dust is a natural phenomenon and appears when a cyclone or a whipping-movement raises sand into the upper layer of the atmosphere. This occurrence is frequent during the months of spring. In our country, the biggest concentration of desert sand happens in April and Ma, published Vistinomer.mk. A post on the social network Facebook claims that the Saharan dust...

On April 2, International Fact-Checking Day, the Metamorphosis Foundation and the Anti-Disinformation for the Balkans organized a Regional Conference on the topic: “Defending Democracy in the Balkans: Safeguarding Information Integrity in the Digital Era”. The conference was attended by experts from the region and beyond who are engaged in checking facts and countering disinformation. At the first panel discussion entitled Challenges...

Putin’s regime is using the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) for spreading influence in Orthodox countries. The ROC  is exerting enormous pressure on other churches and preventing the recognition of autocephaly status the Macedonian Orthodox Church (MOC). By means of intelligence actions, Russian priests are recruiting members of the clergy all over the local Balkan churches, writes Truthmeter.mk in the...

Disinformation is circulating in the region regarding Ukrainian special forces being dissatisfied with the Ukrainian Army’s new leadership and their subsequent preparation for a coup. As has previously been the case, the disinformation comes from the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. This time, the news agency is using an alleged voice message from a member of a secret...

Initially, I thought that the goal of the Russian influence operations was to create a kind of sympathy for the Russian regime and Russian ideology. But their main target now is simply to create more chaos inside the neighboring countries in order to kind of make us look the other way into our internal problems and stop supporting Ukraine...

Photo: Screenshot from a video Not one relevant source even hints that Yulia Navalnaya has found a “new lover” following her husband’s death. The photograph showing Yulia Navalnaya on a beach with a man is from 2021. Using a reverse image search, we discovered that the man in question was Evgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian millionaire living in exile in the...

If the pressure from Russia was not that obvious in the Macedonian case with the banned imports of apples from Prespa, the example of Ecuador was pretty straightforward. By skillfully manipulating the business sector, the pressure put on the Ecuadorian leadership hit success and it changed its mind on the US offer to exchange the old Soviet weaponry and...

Despite this February marking the second anniversary since the start of Ukraine’s suffering at the hands of Russian aggression, which has resulted in thousands of casualties and never-ending destruction of everything significant for Ukraine and Ukrainians, Moscow’s disinformation campaign in regard to its military campaign continues to persistently spread throughout the world. Most recently, such disinformation was directly spread...

Russian media Sputnik and RT (Russia Today) Balkans operating in Serbia, are used as propaganda tools by Putin’s Russia and represent Russian “soft power” in the region. This propaganda from Moscow, disseminated through the contents published by both Russian media outlets and republished by Serbian media, reaches, and is read everywhere in the Western Balkans, including in North Macedonia....

Phото: who.int It is not true that the World Health Organization is killing children in Gaza. On the contrary, WHO representatives are constantly delivering medical and non-medical aid to Gaza, where hospitals have been demolished and conditions for medical treatment are dreadful. WHO collects donations for Gaza and relentlessly calls for a ceasefire in the region. WHO has representatives on...

The EU has never called for a war with Russia but has helped Ukraine to preserve its territorial integrity and democratic society. Europe condemns Russian aggression and appeals for it to stop. The claim that Macedonian citizens should prepare for mobilization is just arbitrary. So far, no one has announced any kind of mobilization. This speculation has been circulated...

Photo: Screenshot from the altered video Since the beginning of the year, a new deepfake video of Zelenskyy dancing in a red traditional costume has spread on social networks. The video of the President of Ukraine is shared on Facebook and TikTok. The video, however, is a fabricated clip from 2020, showing a Russian dancer on some kind of a...

PHOTO: Collage: Vladimir Putin, screenshot/YoutTube; map of Alaska, public domain Facebook posts are spreading disinformation regarding Putin’s latest decree according to which Alaska, the Baltic countries, Tibet, and other territories that historically belonged to the USSR and Imperial Russia will be retrieved back. The fake news started from ESSA News (Poland), spread through the Balkans, and finally arrived in North...

Several disinformation narratives have prevailed this year in the Macedonian-language online space and media – from Ukraine’s “statehood being at stake” should the war continue, to the claim that Zelenskyy has lost popularity. The most consistent disinformation narrative, however, concerns the connection between Kyiv elites and Nazism – a narrative directly promoted by Putin and Medvedev. What stands out...