Thousands of Russia-linked social media profiles are spreading disinformation about COVID-19, AFP reports with reference to Philip Reeker, the acting Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, and other representatives of the US Department of State.
According to the US side, Russian media launched the disinformation campaign on January 20; a day later, thousands of accounts in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian joined it. The Department of State believes that Russia may have been behind the profiles, since cause they used to peddle Kremlin-friendly posts on the situation in Syria, the yellow vests protests in France and other international developments.
These online accounts are posting ‘almost near identical’ messages about the novel coronavirus, reads the report prepared for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and seen by AFP. For example, they claim that COVID-19 is nothing but biological weapon created by the CIA and the United States are resorting to it in order to wage an economic war against China and promote anti-Chines views.
“Russia’s intent is to sow discord and undermine US institutions and alliances from within, including through covert and coercive malign influence campaigns,” Philip Reeker said.
By spreading disinformation about coronavirus, Russian malign actors are once again choosing to threaten public safety by distracting from the global health response, he added.
At the end of 2019, China alerted the World Health Organization to the outbreak of a pneumonia-like disease in the city of Wuhan that has about 11 mln residents. Later, the infecting agent was defined as coronavirus 2019-nCoV, then COVID-2019. At the moment, more than 77,000 persons in China are reported to have caught the infection; over 2,600 have died.
In late January, the Russian authorities reported the identification of two first COVID-2019 cases in the country.
