Welcome to Disinfo Bulletin, your daily update from the EDMO network. Today's most relevant stories: 

🇷🇺 Even when uncovered, Russian propaganda and disinformation keeps spreading in Europe. In February 2024 the Viginum Agency, which operates under the French Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security (SGDSN), published a report in which it announced the identification of a Russian large-scale disinformation campaign in Europe. The network of websites was named “Portal Kombat”. One of its main goals appears to be the spreading of pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda in many EU languages, in particular French, German, Spanish and English, through a web of copycat websites named Pravda, that were activated in the second half of 2023. It is possible that this is an attempt to influence the public discourse by launching a foreign information manipulations and interference (FIMI) campaign.

Even after its unveiling by the Viginum Agency, the proliferation of these Pravda websites in the EU did not stop. Their activation in April in Greek, Italian, Bulgarian, Danish and Dutch was recently detected by Greece Fact Check, a Greek fact-checking organization member of the EDMO network. The EDMO fact-checking network has launched an investigation to better understand the reach, characteristics and impact of this network, and it will be published in the next few weeks.

🇪🇺 Detected disinformation about the EU slowly but consistently grows ahead of the elections. EDMO monitors through its monthly briefs the quantitative evolution of disinformation regarding different topics, such as Ukraine, the pandemic, climate change and so on. EU-related disinformation has been monitored for the past 10 months. We can anticipate here the latest data that will be included in the 34th brief, scheduled for publication on the 17th of April.

In March, the percentage of EU-related disinformation on the total detected disinformation was 8%. This confirms a growing trend since the beginning of the EDMO monitoring: the average of the first 5 months is 4,4%, the average of the last 5 months is 7%. It is probable that the percentage will continue to increase until the elections.

🚃 Thousands of attempts to destabilize the Czech rail system have been detected by Czech transport authorities since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the Czech Republic, these efforts have included service attacks on ticketing systems and attempted signal interference to cause accidents. Generally, this kind of attack appears to target European energy infrastructure in order to make the EU appear weak in the face of external cyber threats. Various EU efforts, such as the so-called “Cyber solidarity package”, are focused on strengthening Europe’s resilience in the face of potential attacks, while the threat of foreign action against cyber infrastructure continues to loom as the June elections approach.


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This tool gathers material from the inputs of the EDMO fact-checking network, as well as a recently launched public database from the EFCSN network (Elections 24 Check), and the various national EDMO hubs, including community initiatives and insights from individual fact-checking organizations.