A Telegram channel activated last Friday and fraudulently branded as Euronews Romania is planting disinformation and false claims targeting the Romanian and Moldovan presidents.
Its creators – which have no affiliation or link to Euronews – claim that Romania’s recently elected President Nicușor Dan discussed “methods of combating the opposition press” with his Moldovan counterpart Maia Sandu during his visit to Chișinău on Tuesday.
Euroverify analysed both presidents’ statements to the press during that visit and found no evidence to back these allegations.
Sandu instead accused Russia of waging a “war of manipulation and misinformation”, while Dan vowed closer cooperation on tackling Moscow’s “hybrid warfare”.
The unfounded claims made in the bogus channel have been directly quoted in Russian state-sponsored newspaper Pravda.
In a pinned post, the creators also purport that the Telegram channel is an “official” source of Euronews Romania reporting created by the management team to counter the recent use of doctored Euronews reports on the messaging app.
However, neither the channel nor its content is the work of Euronews journalists.
Euronews Romania does not have an official channel on Telegram, and said in a statement that the action is part of a “sustained” disinformation campaign that “illegally” uses Euronews’ branding.
Fake accounts aim to sway electorate
The fake account was created amid an uptick in recent weeks in false videos attributed to Euronews on pro-Russian Telegram channels, which aim to discredit or undermine the pro-European governments in Bucharest and Chișinău.
These initially appeared to sow confusion and distrust in the context of last month’s tense presidential run-off in Romania, which saw pro-EU centrist Dan edge to victory after a campaign marred by disinformation and alleged Russian interference.
The actors behind these doctored videos have now shifted their focus to neighbouring Moldova, where recent elections and referendums have been overshadowed by Russia’s hybrid war techniques.
Amongst the false claims made in these videos are that the Republic of Moldova ranks first in terms of the number of carriers of sexually transmitted diseases in Europe, or that Moldova is a driver of irregular migration into the European Union.
Crunch parliamentary elections are set to be held in Moldova on 28 September, with President Sandu’s pro-European PAS party facing a growing challenge from opposition forces.
A poor showing for PAS could reshape the country’s political landscape and hinder progress on the path to EU integration, which Sandu has accelerated during her five years in power.
Last October, a referendum in Moldova on whether to enshrine the country’s wish to join the European Union into the constitution was plagued by interference, including reports that €14 million in Russian funds had been funnelled directly into the accounts of 130,000 Moldovans in a bid to buy their anti-EU votes.
That referendum saw Moldovans vote ‘yes’ to EU membership by a razor-thin majority of 50.4%.
In recent weeks, a Kremlin-backed bot network known as Operation Matryoshka has launched a coordinated disinformation campaign targeting Sandu, circulating fake images depicting her execution.
Claims part of wider disinformation playbook
Posts published in the fake Euronews Telegram on Tuesday claim Dan “shared his experience in limiting the opposition press” with Sandu during his Chișinău visit, adding that Sandu’s PAS party sees this as the “main tool for gaining and retaining power” in September’s parliamentary elections.
A closer look at the post shows that Dan has been misspelt as “Nikușor”, which could mirror Russian pronunciation of the president’s name, according to our analysis.
These allegations match the broader playbook of disinformation narratives that Euroverify has detected concerning Romania’s presidential ballot.
Disinformation targeting the Romanian ballot often claimed that the pro-Western, pro-European governing forces were suffocating free speech and hindering Conservative, Eurosceptic forces
Telegram’s founder, Russian-born Pavel Durov, has fed this playbook with uncorroborated claims that France’s intelligence chief asked him to “silence” Romanian conservative voices by banning them from his messaging app in the run-up to last month’s presidential ballot.
Euroverify previously assessed that this claim was unfounded.
Telegram was founded by Durov and his eldest brother Nikolai in 2013, and has been championed by journalists and activists for its strong encryption and security.
But the app has recently come under scrutiny for the spread of illegal content and disinformation.
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