EU: Russia has become the world leader in disinformation in 2022

According to the 2022 report on disinformation and manipulation of facts in the global information space, published by the European External Action Service (EEAS), the level of threat posed by Russian (and Russia-friendly) propaganda has reached the point where the EU is forced to prepare to respond.

European diplomacy chief Josep Borrell this week announced EU plans to create an innovative platform to counter Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns. The EU has been forced to implement new measures in this regard by the fact that EU institutions and missions abroad have recently been increasingly targeted by Russian disinformation.

The new institution will be called the Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) and will operate within the EEAS, the EU’s diplomatic service. The center will monitor information manipulation by foreign actors and coordinate with the 27 EU member states and civil society representatives.

“Authoritarian regimes try to create and manipulate disinformation. We have previously created tools to detect and uncover these manipulations, but this is not enough and we need to go further”

The EU top diplomat warned in particular of a “new wave” of disinformation through fabricated images, fake videos as well as disguised pseudo-media, i.e. websites posing as media outlets. He compared the authors of the increasingly large-scale disinformation to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist, noting that today’s perpetrators can act more effectively than Hitler’s propaganda because of the ability to spread fakes with unprecedented speed using social media.

“We need to understand how these disinformation campaigns are organized to identify the subjects of manipulation”