00:00Which European countries are most exposed to Russian disinformation?
00:08Former Soviet states and Balkan countries are the primary targets of the Kremlin's Pravda disinformation network, according to a new study.
00:16The Center for Information, Democracy and Citizenship at the American University in Bulgaria
00:21looked at more than 640,000 publications on the network between December 2024 and March 2025.
00:29It found that former Soviet and Balkan countries accounted for 52% of all publications,
00:35despite representing a disproportionately small fraction of the population of the countries studied.
00:40Specifically, the top three countries most disproportionately targeted by Pravda disinformation are Moldova, Latvia and Estonia,
00:48with Serbia and Armenia making it into the top five.
00:51Lithuania, Georgia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic round out the top ten.
00:57The proximity of these countries to each other and the statistics show that there's a sophisticated effort to spread disinformation
01:03in regions of strategic value to the Kremlin, according to the study.
01:07But why is Moldova ranked so highly when it comes to Russian disinformation?
01:11One of the reasons is geography, its position between Ukraine and Romania representing a boundary between Eastern and Western Europe,
01:18two different spheres of influence, according to the study.
01:21Another is its political context.
01:23It was given EU candidacy status in June 2022 and is currently dealing with tensions between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions.
01:31This ties into its history too.
01:33As a former Soviet Republic, Moldova has economic, cultural and historical links to Moscow,
01:39while also trying to get closer to the EU.
01:42Experts have previously told EuroVerify that these countries still have the remnants of a pro-Moscow network among certain politicians,
01:49making them more susceptible to Russian narratives.
01:52And of course could not be used to the outcomes of a pro-Western and pro-Western and pro-Lосс,
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02:01A huge collective of white nation is now.
02:02With us, the EU is nowño-Russian Act of Europe.
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02:06And the EU has not yet to be seen in the UK, but the EU has not been a clear path.
02:08The EU has never been a clear path of the EU.
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