Weapon of mass distortion. How Russian TV channels bypass sanctions and continue to broadcast in EU

Most of these Telegram channels date back to pre-pandemic times. The most popular one, Anti-Spiegel with 95,000 subscribers, was set up in May 2019. Anti-Spiegel is run by a prominent pro-Kremlin propagandist, German national Thomas Röper, who has been living and working in St. Petersburg since the late 1990s. Not only does Röper broadcast his content via Telegram, but he also has a website, a YouTube channel (over 100,000 subscribers), Twitter, and Facebook. However, judging by the frequency of updates, Telegram remains his main outlet. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the blogger was actively spreading fakes about vaccination, and with the beginning of Russia's full-scale war with Ukraine he turned into a pro-Russian war correspondent who travels around the Donbas and exposes “the Nazi junta’s atrocities”. Berlin-based CeMAS Institute calls Anti-Spiegel one of the most popular “alternative” news sources in German-language Telegram channels and groups dedicated to conspiracy theories. Yet none of Röper 's blogs have been blocked so far.

Despite Telegram being far from the most popular messenger in Europe, its share grew significantly during the pandemic, at least in Germany. Today, according to various surveys, it fluctuates between 15% and 18% of respondents. German TV channel ZDF expressed concern over the matter in a broadcast:

“Originally programmed to allow dissidents to communicate securely in autocratic regimes, Telegram has evolved into a haven for extremists: pandemic deniers, right-wing extremists, and even criminal organizations can communicate largely undisturbed there.”

German authorities say that, despite numerous requests to remove extremist content, Telegram simply ignores them. According to Shvarts, Germans themselves consider Telegram a “Darknet”, and it is mostly used by immigrants from CIS countries.

The Russian social network VK (formerly VKontakte), which is overseen by the son of the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration, Vladimir Kirienko, remains a stronghold for propaganda. Some countries, including Latvia, have blocked the VK website.

Video hosting sites

YouTube is still a major outlet for Russian propagandists. Once RT was deleted, its daily news reels became scattered across a multitude of small private channels that are harder to trace and remove. Their task is to promote videos to the top, using bots to gain views and comments, so that as many YouTube users as possible watch Solovyov and the likes of him, says Alexei Shvarts. The channels of “grassroots propagandists” like Yuriy Podolyak and Anatoly Shariy are also still out there. Although they are regularly blocked and spring up again under new names, YouTube recommendations make it easy for Putin's supporters to find their way back to these outlets. For example, Podolyaka's new channel, which was created only three weeks ago, already has 40,000 subscribers.

As The Insider discovered, Russian TV channels can pay for the placement of their broadcasts on YouTube channels – for instance, those dedicated to game streaming. Thus, there is a channel called Ura Igra (“hurrah game”), which, according to its Steam profile, purportedly belongs to an Oleg Lebedev from “Sverdlovsk, Russia”. (Sverdlovsk is the Soviet name for Novosibirsk, and Lebedev's VK profile has been blocked for “suspicious activity”.) The channel has been around since 2017 and has over 30,000 subscribers; this fall, it suddenly switched to non-stop broadcasts of 60 Minut, a talk show by propagandists Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov. In October, Ura Igra also launched a Telegram channel for posting links to Russian news on the Smotrim platform. In its VK community, Ura Igra has a price list with advertising rates, so this placement may have been arranged on a commercial basis.

RT shows continue to be distributed in Europe via Odysée and Rumble, which are notorious for their lack of moderation. During the pandemic, both services became a haven for COVID dissidents (the number of visitors to Rumble surged 31-fold from 2020 to 2021). Both platforms currently broadcast RT content. And while Odysée eventually agreed to remove RT France's broadcasts (as The Insider learned from the Denis Diderot Committee coordinator André Lange), the head of Rumble, Canadian entrepreneur Chris Pawlowski, publicly refused to do so, tweeting that he would disconnect France from his video-hosting service. It was the French government that demanded that Rumble block Russian news resources, but the content of the video hosting platform is accessible from any country in the European Union.

Alternative ways of combating propaganda

Despite the Rumble situation, André Lange notes that it is easier to secure cooperation from digital platforms than satellite operators or national broadcast regulators. He cites the example of Twitter, which recently blocked an account for spreading false information about the grandfather of European Commission President Ursula von den Leyen being a Nazi. (A similar fake about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was launched in April by the Russia 1 television channel.) However, Twitter is notorious for making loud announcements about blocking accounts with aggressive remarks about Ukrainians – and failing to follow through.

Karina Urbanaviciute, a project manager at Debunk EU, an international independent organization researching disinformation and media literacy, agrees with Lange. Urbanaviciute recalls an initiative by US and Australian anti-extremism organizations that got Facebook to automatically link to Life After Hate and EXIT Australia – NGOs that offer help in finding safe escapes from extremist groups – when people query the social network for specific words and terms related to violent extremism (such as «Heil Hitler»). According to the researcher, this is the key to success in countering Russian propaganda: instead of forbidding people to watch, focus on how they process information:

«We have to understand that blocking everything is simply impossible. Therefore, in addition to controlling the information space, we should also foster media literacy, starting from school, as Finland does, for example. Both methods are time-consuming and will not bear fruit until five or ten years from now. As for the elderly and the impact propaganda has on them, it's even more complicated. Studies have shown that people believe in conspiracy theories because it makes them feel comfortable. Similarly, many people take comfort in watching Russian channels because the anchors confirm what they already believe. Something has to happen to make it uncomfortable to stay in this bubble.”