The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, on Tuesday singled out Russia for promoting disinformation about the war in Ukraine, pointing out that the battle is fought not only on the ground but in the public space and drew a simile with Nazi Germany: «It’s nothing new, (Joseph) Goebbels already invented it in World War II».
In the opening speech at the conference ‘Beyond disinformation: EU responses to the threat of foreign information manipulation’, the High Representative has warned that disinformation has become one more weapon in Moscow’s arsenal. «This war is not fought only on the battlefield by soldiers, but in the communicative space, trying to win people’s minds and hearts,» he stressed.
At this point, Borrell recalled that disinformation techniques in wartime were invented by Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany during World War II. «Lying and spreading disinformation is not new, what is new is the intensity, the will and the instruments,» he pointed out, regarding the Russian case.
«Goebbels didn’t have instruments like social networks or the Internet. But now people who act like Goebbels, who tell a lie a thousand times, have the power of multiplication at the speed of light and reach more people around the world,» he said.
In the framework of the conference, the head of European diplomacy has insisted that Russia «invests massively» in disinformation and manipulation, generating a whole industry, to «lie» and «destabilize» liberal societies, attacking confidence in democratic institutions. «Information is the lifeblood that makes democracy work,» he defended.
«We have tons of evidence that Russia is coordinating attempts to manipulate public debates in open societies,» he has assured, to conclude that Moscow of being behind at least 15,000 cases of manipulation and disinformation since 2015 detected by the EU’s foreign disinformation fighting team.
Similarly, he has accused Russia of strengthening internal control to «hide» from its own population the reality of the war in Ukraine. «Anyone who tries to tell the truth is branded as a foreign agent,» he has denounced, after referring to the persecution of the independent media Meduza.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
