- More rugby balls - 21st August 2025
- ‘Here is the (misinformation) news…’ - 21st August 2025
- Reform minded - 20th August 2025
During 42 years in journalism (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon) deliberate sabotage of stories, or hacking into them, was rare at the start – but today it is happening ever more frequently with certain states even trying to influence elections.
It seems that journalists and websites like The Eye as well as key politicians are being targeted ever more frequently by state players. Let’s not beat about the bush here – it is by Russia.
The latest example of it is in Moldova which is to hold elections next month.
Vladimir Putin doesn’t like this small landlocked country because it is a liberal democracy which is leaning towards the European Union (EU).
On March 3 2022, Moldova applied for EU membership, with on July 4 2025 the EU and Moldova holding the first-ever summit. a historic step forward on its path to joining.
So it is a thorn in the side of Mr Putin who has made clear that he dislikes the EU (often through allies).
Last year’s European Parliament (EP) elections were sure to be cause for celebration in Moscow because there were successes for far-right, Eurosceptic parties.
Various prominent Russian politicians who are close to Mr Putin hailed the rise of right-wing parties in the EU following the elections, with former President Dmitry Medvedev calling for pro-EU leaders to be relegated “to the ash heap of history”.
Moldova, though, thinks otherwise so the elections there next month are very important for Mr Putin, and Maia Sandu the president who supports becoming a member of the EU, must be stopped from winning them.
One journalist knows this only too well.
Her website had been cloned, and she appeared as the author of a fake story claiming that Moldova had spent $400,000 on “illegally obtained sperm” from gay stars, including Elton John.
Clearly (or NOT clearly) this is complete nonsense, and forms a worrying backdrop to Ms Sandu and her party being targeted by misinformation campaigns.
This was a textbook ‘matryoshka’, or Russian-doll, operation.
Few see the cloned site itself, but the article is disseminated by networked accounts on social media, where its seeming origin in a foreign news source lends it credibility.
Such ‘stories’ are everywhere, says Vadim Pistrinciuc, a Moldovan political analyst: “On Telegram, TikTok, Facebook, they have thousands of accounts”.
Bot networks are supplemented by payments to local influencers, and it seems that even troublemaking websites like The Eye are kept an eye on.
The site always used to get a couple of ‘allow requests’ from e-mail addresses with the .ru (Russia) ending, but recently this has increased massively.
In the past there have been four or five A DAY!
It is hard to think that we have any influence at all because we are so small, but apparently Russian spooks believe differently.
This is small beer, but what is happening in a country of just 2.4 million is NOT!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (during which foreign interference was rare at the beginning) as he was gripped by the incurable disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – how signs are appearing promoting an extremist Welsh nationalist group with the logo of a 1960s paramilitary organisation, apparently painting over the fact that the body had rumoured links to the IRA, and was led by a man with the mental age of a child.
