The East StratCom Task Force on Russia said on Thursday 19 March that it had in its database "a rather sizeable yield of COVID-19-disinformation" since a first case was recorded at the end of January.
This week, out of the 86 cases of disinformation identified, one third were devoted to Covid-19, according to an article posted on the 'EUvsDisinfo' website by this Task Force of the European External Action Service (EEAS).
“Kremlin supporters", it explains, keep saying that the virus was created within NATO or in a laboratory. "This week is no exception. We find the same statement, with slight variations, in Russian, Arabic, Italian and English", says the Task Force.
It also pointed out that the information on the virus broadcast by the Spanish service of the Russian public broadcaster RT in recent days has aroused particularly strong interest.
Two trends are emerging. The EEAS working group notes some differences between disinformation targeting a national Russian audience and disinformation aimed at an international audience.
The first essentially presents the virus as a foreign aggression, originating in Latvia and the United States; it ensures that the problems associated with Covid-19 mainly affect foreign countries and that they will eventually lead to the collapse of the EU.
The approach would be different when pro-Kremlin disinformation bodies target international audiences. The epidemic is then described in "much darker and more cynical" terms, analyses the Task Force, and the virus is presented as an invention of the world's elites, a powerful biological weapon, a pretext for the pharmaceutical industries to increase their sales, etc.
"And then there are recurrent claims that there is no outbreak", it adds, quoting South Front, one of the leading English-language disinformation networks in favour of the Kremlin, "suggesting that it is all a scheme by the Italian government to milk the EU for money and relax the stringent EU’s budgetary rules".
"Unfounded" accusations. The spokesman of the European External Action Service, Peter Stano, told the press the day before the publication of the article on EUvsDisinfo that "the number of false reports, outright lies and disinformation" from outside the EU, including from Russia and pro-Kremlin sources, had increased since the beginning of the epidemic.
"The official Russian response to this is distancing, they deny", he said.
For her part, the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, condemned European claims on Thursday 19 March, and denounced, according to AFP, "an immoral attempt to hide through unfounded accusations" the EU's inability to fight the pandemic. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)