10 March 2025
They flooded American conservatives with stories they were eager to read, they used social media algorithms for exactly what they were designed to do, and in doing so, they earned their city the title of “Fake News Capital of the World.” Dozens of media outlets and researchers from universities across the globe have covered the […]
21 November 2024
There are no US-run biolabs in Ukraine. The country is one of many republics of the former Soviet Union and other countries that work with the Department of Defense within the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. While the US may provide funds to upgrade or build laboratories in other countries, the laboratories are run by partner countries and the purpose of the program […]
5 October 2024
In the last years, channels have appeared on the Telegram application that spread pro-Serbian and pro-Russian narratives in the Western Balkans. There is no affinity for Russia and Kosovo and no pro-Russian groups have been recorded that have the goal to mobilize Kosovo Albanians. Still, Kosovo continues to be one of the key topics that […]
26 August 2024
Elon Musk speaks Albanian, while Donald Trump presents himself as the “President of the Russian Federation” – such manipulative videos can now be made in less than two minutes. Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) tools offer unlimited possibilities, and thus they can be used to replace the face of one person with another and alter or […]
23 July 2024
On several occasions, since the beginning of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin’s propaganda has tried to twist the reasons why it went to war, i.e. to justify its attacks. The justification in this post is that the reason was to put an end to all wars which is quite illogical. Apart from that, […]
1 July 2024
The pro-Russian post aims to justify the military invasion of Russia in Ukraine. Presenting Ukraine as the land of the Nazis is a false propaganda platitude that Russian President Vladimir Putin used to justify the military invasion he started on the 24th of February 2022, completely unprovoked. The term “special military operation” is also a […]
20 May 2024
Sixteen non-standard municipal landfills and dozens of illegal dumps full of all sorts of waste, without a fence or protection, scattered almost near every inhabited area, in the rivers, beside agricultural plots, roads, or forests, is the truthful image of the Eastern and North-Eastern region of Macedonia, but also of the entire country. These two […]
16 May 2024
The passing of the bill on American aid for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, first in the House of Representatives and then in the United States Senate, was the main motive for Moscow’s response to the old disinformation narratives. This event, Iran’s assault on Israel, including, undoubtedly, the elections in our country, contributed to the increase […]
7 May 2024
EUvsDisinfo states that “no credible medium reported this unfounded claim, which was solely circulated by pro-Kremlin and social media accounts”. The only source for this disinformation narrative is, allegedly, a British media outlet, created a few days before the story was published, called London Crier, which was evaluated by members of the BBC Verify team […]
23 April 2024
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 […]
23 April 2024
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 […]
16 April 2024
Three months have passed since the public found out that Marjan Nikolovski, editor, journalist, and owner of the portal “Religija.mk” was summoned by the Ecclesiastical Court of Macedonian Orthodox Church – Archdiocese of Ohrid (MOC-OA) for his alleged dissemination of hatred among believers and the leadership – the Synod of MOC. The same amount of time has […]
5 April 2024
P“It’s our responsibility and the duty of state institutions and all stakeholders to speak out when fact-checkers are threatened and do all we can to provide a safe daily working environment for them”, said the EU Ambassador, David Geer at the opening of the regional conference “Defending Democracy on the Balkans: Safeguarding Information Integrity in […]
3 April 2024
“Democracy at Risk: Elections in the Age of Disinformation” was the title of the second session of the regional conference of the Anti-disinformation Network for the Balkans on the occasion of marking International Fact-Checking Day. Activists and journalists from the region shared experiences related to disinformation, with a special focus on the pre-election period. Vladimir […]
29 March 2024
This manipulative post is spreading the well-known insulting, indecent propaganda narrative satanizing NATO and the EU. Contrary to the claim made in the post, NATO is not connected with a religious army, but the Alliance enrolls troops regardless of their religious background. The values advocated by the EU have nothing to do with legalization of […]
28 March 2024
Key witness in the impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden, regarding the alleged receipt of bribes from an Ukrainian company through his son Hunter Biden, initiated by a Republican politician from the US House of Representatives, apparently did not tell the truth when sharing confidential information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Not only […]
25 March 2024
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, […]
18 March 2024
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 […]
18 March 2024
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 […]
3 March 2024
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 […]
