Which European countries are most exposed to Russian disinformation?
A new study says that there's a sophisticated effort to spread disinformation in regions of strategic value to the Kremlin, particularly Eastern Europe.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/04/18/which-european-countries-are-most-exposed-to-russian-disinformation
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A new study says that there's a sophisticated effort to spread disinformation in regions of strategic value to the Kremlin, particularly Eastern Europe.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/04/18/which-european-countries-are-most-exposed-to-russian-disinformation
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
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00:00Which European countries are most exposed to Russian disinformation?
00:09Former Soviet states and Balkan countries are the primary targets of the Kremlin's Pravda disinformation network, according to a new study.
00:17The Centre for Information, Democracy and Citizenship at the American University in Bulgaria
00:22looked at more than 640,000 publications on the network between December 2024 and March 2025.
00:29It found that former Soviet and Balkan countries accounted for 52% of all publications,
00:35despite representing a disproportionately small fraction of the population of the countries studied.
00:40Specifically, the top three countries most disproportionately targeted by Pravda disinformation are Moldova, Latvia and Estonia,
00:48with Serbia and Armenia making it into the top five.
00:51Lithuania, Georgia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic round out the top ten.
00:56The proximity of these countries to each other and the statistics show that there's a sophisticated effort to spread disinformation in regions of strategic value to the Kremlin, according to the study.
01:06But why is Moldova ranked so highly when it comes to Russian disinformation?
01:10One of the reasons is geography. It's positioned between Ukraine and Romania, representing a boundary between Eastern and Western Europe, two different spheres of influence, according to the study.
01:21Another is its political context. It was given EU candidacy status in June 2022 and is currently dealing with tensions between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions.
01:31This ties into its history, too. As a former Soviet Republic, Moldova has economic, cultural and historical links to Moscow, while also trying to get closer to the EU.
01:42Experts have previously told EuroVerify that these countries still have the remnants of a pro-Moscow network among certain politicians, making them more susceptible to Russian narratives.
01:52AMY KLEW.
02:07So we're up for now.