A Russian disinformation network in Europe called "Dvoinik" is linked to employees of the National Media Group (NMG), German publication t-online reported on Wednesday. Comments from foreign experts for the bots' social media campaigns are taken by journalists from Channel One, Izvestia and REN TV, of which NMG is a shareholder, according to t-online.
Details. The publication t-online has identified two journalists from Russia who interview Western experts and politicians. The video then finds its way onto a network of fake pages and is massively distributed by an army of bots working in the Kremlin's interests.
▪️Экспертов are misled about the purpose of the communication and future posting sites. In particular, Simon Schnetzer, author of a series of studies on youth in Germany, was contracted by the administrators of Dvoinik as the author of the French-language site RRN.media. However, Schnetzer later discovered a video of his conversation on the Wanderfalke website, with the interview's summaries claiming to be about the seriousness of the French farmers' protests.
▪️Журналисты t-online looked into the leaks about the journalist who spoke to Schnetzer and other experts, as well as his colleague who arranged the interview. The interviewer turned out to be Vadim Chaika (pictured). According to t-online, he is 31 years old. He graduated from the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. He listed French TV companies France Télévisions and TF1 as his places of employment on LinkedIn. However, according to t-online, Chaika's employer was Channel One in 2020 and Izvestia newspaper in 2022.
▪️Вероятно, Vadim Chaika's age is incorrectly stated in the article of the German edition - he is not 31 years old, but 26 years old. This is confirmed by Radio Canada's publications about voting in the 2018 Russian presidential election, which mentions that Chaika was 22 years old on March 18, 2018, and the RANCHIGS news about Chaika's trip to the North Pole in 2017 (he was in his third year of university at the time). In 2017, Chaika went to France on the Neoma Business School exchange program. A year later, he traveled to Russia with a crew from the TF-1 channel. In 2021, Chaika was an employee of Channel One, according to leaks seen by "Agency".
▪️Второй journalist - Alexander (no surname is given in the text) - also works at Izvestia and REN TV channel. He is 28 years old and graduated from Moscow State University.
▪️НМГ and both journalists ignored t-online's questions. Chaika did not respond to the message of the "Agency" journalist either.
Context. The websites of the "Dvoinik" project started appearing in March 2022. They look like copies of well-known publications such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel, t-online, Welt, The Guardian, Le Mond, El Mundo. However, they do not write in the same way as the media they copy: the "lookalikes" disseminate Russian propaganda narratives. After the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall, a fake Spiegel page appeared that portrayed Ukraine as a sponsor of terrorism. The "lookalike" publications were spread by bots on social networks, including on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
https://bastyon.com/tomberuk?s=590b778161922da73cf2bf302e77eb694646e7db63072de026a8ad5eefbd4654&ref=PFHDJpEBn55p8HeXBBbknrDViVyXr6Be6e *** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***