Investigations

From spreading falsehoods like “COVID-19 does not exist” or “vaccines carry killer chips”, some bad actors have turned quasi automatically to a full-hearted defense of the Russian attack on Ukraine based on disinformation. The largest Telegram pandemic conspiracy groups now defend Putin and his invasion. And they do so with hoaxes. At Maldita.es we are going to tell you how 10 of the most followed channels do it, all of them within 9,000 to 240,000 followers.

Since February 24, 2022, when Russia started its military attack against Ukraine, disinformation about the ongoing conflict started to grow all over Europe (and beyond).

After weeks of tensions, on 24 February 2022,  Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine. As soon as the war  in Ukraine began, disinformation also started spreading: false images, decontextualized videos, or plainly invented pieces of information invaded the internet and, in some cases, ended up on traditional media channels as well.

In #UkraineFacts – an initiative led by the Spanish fact-checking organization Maldita.es, with the contribution of tens of signatories of the International fact-checking network (Ifcn)’s code – you will find out in which countries each disinformation content has been detected and access the debunks of the different fact-checking organizations that have investigated it.

European fact-checkers focused a lot of their efforts in the past days and weeks in detecting and tackling disinformation concerning the situation in Ukraine.

European fact-checkers focused a lot of their efforts in the past days and weeks in detecting and tackling disinformation concerning the situation in Ukraine.