How the Fake News Network funded by Russia aims to disrupt the European elections

A secret network funded by Russia is trying to disrupt the democratic elections to come in a state of Eastern Europe, the BBC revealed.

With the help of an infiltration journalist, we discovered that the network had promised to pay the participants if they published pro-Russian propaganda and false news underwent the pro-EU management part of Moldova before the country’s September 28 parliamentary ballot.

Participants were paid to find supporters of the pro-Russia of Moldova to register secretly-and also to make a so-called survey. This was done in the name of an non -existent organization, which makes it illegal. The results of this selective sampling, an organizer of the suggested network, could lay the foundations to question the outcome of the election.

The results of the so-called survey, suggesting that the ruling party will lose, have already been published online.

In fact, official polls suggest that the party in power of action and solidarity (not) founded by President Maia Sandu is currently ahead of the pro-Russian patriotic electoral block (BEP).

We found links between the secret network and the Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor – sanctioned by the United States for “the malignant influence operations of the Kremlin” and now a fugitive in Moscow. The United Kingdom also sanctioned him for corruption.

We have also found links between the network and a non -profit organization (NGO) called Evrazia.

Evrazia has links with Mr. Shor and was sanctioned by the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU for having allegedly united Moldovan citizens to vote against EU membership last year. The referendum on membership has succeeded, but by a very small margin.

“In 2024, the campaign (from Ilan Shor) was money.

We asked Ian Shor and Evrazia to respond to our survey results – they did not provide an answer.

• If you are in the United Kingdom, you can watch the story on Global Eye, BBC 2 at 7:00 p.m. BST on Monday September 22

Moldova can be small, but sandwich between Ukraine and Romania by EU, it has a strategic meaning for Europe and the Kremlin, according to experts.

The global service has infiltrated the network – coordinated on the Telegram messaging application – via a link sent to us by a reproduction.

This gave us a crucial overview of the functioning of an undemocratic propaganda network.

Our infiltration journalist Ana and 34 other recruits were invited to attend secret seminars that “prepare agents”. With titles like “How to go from your kitchen to the national chef”, they seemed to serve as a verification process. Ana and the others had to pass regular tests on what they had learned.

Our journalist was then contacted by a network coordinator called Alina JUC. The social media profile of Ms. JUC says that she is from Transnistria, a separatist region in eastern Moldova faithful to Moscow, and her Instagram shows that she has made several trips to Russia in recent years.

Ms. JUC told Ana that it would be paid 3,000 LEI Moldoudan ($ 170, £ 125) per month to produce Tiktok and Facebook publications as the elections approached, and that it would receive money from Promsvyazbank (PSB) – a sanctioned Russian state bank which acts as an official bank of the Russian Ministry of Defense, and is a shareholder in one of the companies in Ilan Shor.

Ana and the other recruits were trained to produce publications on social networks using Chatgpt. The content “attracts people if the image contains a certain satire … on reality”, they have been said, but that too much interior should be avoided to ensure that messages felt “organic”.

Inside the Telegram group, Ana and the BBC had access to the previous instructions published by the participants. Initially, they were asked for patriotic posts on the historical personalities of Moldovan history – but gradually, the requests had become openly political.

The ANA has been invited to publish unfounded allegations – including that the current Moldova government plans to falsify election results, potential membership in the EU of Moldova depends on its Citizens LGBTQ +, and that President Sandu facilitates the trafficking of children.

Social media campaigns are now often at the heart of national elections. We have monitored publications on social networks supporting the ruling party party, but we have not revealed any obvious disinformation campaign.

Throughout our infiltration exercise with the network, we only shared publications that were factually exact, and we have limited their number.

We wanted to know who else was in the network, because we had evidence, it was made up of several groups similar to the one we infiltrated. We looked for similar activity models through other accounts that we could monitor thanks to our telegram access.

The network, we concluded, is made up of at least 90 Tiktok accounts – some pretending to be newspapers – which have published thousands of videos totaling more than 23 million views and 860,000 likes since January. The population of Moldova represents only 2.4 million.

We have shared our results with the digital judicial research laboratory based in the United States (DFRLAB), and he told us that its analysis shows that the network could be even more important. The wider network has raised more than 55 million views and more than 2.2 million likes on Tiktok since January, DFRLAB revealed.

The network has not only published a disinformation. Ms. JUC also offered the Ana 200 Moldoudan Lei ($ 12, £ 9) the time in cash to carry out an unofficial survey, interviewing people in the capital of Moldova on their favorite candidates during the elections.

Before carrying out this task, participants received training on how to subtly influence those interviewed.

They were also invited to secretly record the people interviewed who said they had supported pro-Russian opposition.

Ms. JUC revealed that it should “prevent the vote from being rigged”, suggesting the results of the investigation and that the secret recordings would be used, in the event of a victory, as supposedly he won unjustly.

Our evidence also suggests that the network that our journalist joined is reflected in Russia. Ana heard – and filmed – Alina JUC on the phone asking money in Moscow.

“Listen, can you bring money from Moscow … I just need to give my employees their salary”, we filmed it saying.

It was not clear that would send him money, but we found links between the network and Ilan Shor via the NGO Evrazia.

Ilan Shor and Evrazia did not respond to our survey results.

The BBC has found photos of Ana’s manager, Alina JUC, on the Evrazia website – and one of the telegram groups that Ana was added was called “Evrazia Leaders”.

The UK Foreign Office said that Evrazia operates “in Moldova on behalf of the corrupt fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor … to destabilize Moldovan democracy”.

We asked Alina Juc to comment on our conclusions – she did not respond.

Tiktok said that he had implemented additional security and security measures before the elections and continued to “aggressively counter the misleading behavior”. The owner of Facebook Meta did not respond to our results.

The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom has denied participation in false news and electoral interference and said it was the EU who interfered in the Moldova elections.

Additional reports: Malvina Cojocari, Andreea Jitaru, Angela Stanciu