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NewsFront (website)

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Crimean disinformation website

NewsFront
Type of siteNews agency
Founded2014
HeadquartersBakhchysarai in Russia-occupied Crimea
Area servedWorldwide
Key peopleKonstantin Knyrik
IndustryNews media
URLnews-front.info

NewsFront (sometimes written News Front) is a website based in Russian occupied Crimea, described by the United States Department of the Treasury as "a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet...particularly focused on supporting Russia-backed forces in Ukraine." According to owner Konstantin Knyrik, however, NewsFront is fighting an "information war" against unfair attacks on Russia. NewsFront describes itself as "a news agency that runs news in ten languages including Russian, German, English, Bulgarian, Georgian, French, and Spanish."

The European Union's anti-disinformation unit EUvsDisinfo described NewsFront as a disinformation platform focused on Kremlin priorities. They wrote:

News Front latches on to any kind of discontent in each target audience, multiplies it and adds some content important to the Kremlin. This way, the Kremlin hopes, Ukraine will be associated with whatever the German audiences hate – feminism, multi-culturalism, migration; while a British audience associate Ukraine with right-wing extremists, US imperialism and colonialism.

Leadership and origin

NewsFront is published by Mediagroup Newsfront LLC, headquartered in Bakhchysarai in central Crimea, registered to the home address of local council member Konstantin Knyrik. In addition to running NewsFront, Knyrik is head of the Crimean branch of the pro-Putin political party Rodina. The co-owner with Knyrik is Mikhail Sinelin, a Russian businessman who was formerly a Kremlin official. Both had an equal 50% share. As of 2022 as the owners of Mediagroup Newsfront LLC are listed Knyrik (50%) and Yulia Lozanova (50%), Lozanova is supposedly the wife of Sinelin.

NewsFront was established in March 2014 when, during the Russian invasion of Crimea, Knyrik with a group of masked gunmen broke into the headquarters of the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism and took over its resources.

In April 2015, the Media Group News Front company registered NewsFront.info as a private news agency.

In 2018, Knyrik told an interviewer that his goal was "an alternative source of information for people in Europe and the U.S." to counteract "this bullshit published by the mainstream media in the West." With NewsFront, he claimed that he was fighting an "information war" that had been started by Western nations unfairly attacking Russia.

Knyrik has been sanctioned by Ukraine in 2020, followed by the European Union, United States, Australia and Switzerland in 2022. Sinelin has been sanctioned by the United States, Ukraine and Australia in 2022. Mediagroup Newsfront LLC has been sanctioned by the United States in 2021, followed by Ukraine, Australia and Japan in 2022.

Allegations of disinformation

In 2017, German newspaper Die Zeit alleged that NewsFront had tried to influence elections in both Germany and France by promoting false claims against Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. According to the Atlantic Council, NewsFront was in 2017 one of the top three sources of Russian propaganda in Germany. Together with official Russian outlets RT and Sputnik, their content had 500,000 followers on Facebook.

In 2019, EU vs Disinformation stated that NewsFront focuses its German-language version on anti-immigration German nationalism in order to attract a discontented German-speaking audience to the pro-Kremlin viewpoints of news from RT and Sputnik. The English language version pursues the same goal, but with "left-leaning" commentary, nothing about immigration. According to EU vs Disinformation, NewsFront published more than 800 disinformations since 2015 (as of July 2022).

In 2020, the US State Department described NewsFront as part of a "disinformation and propaganda ecosystem," where Russian state actors teamed with others whose connection to Russia was less clear, in order to get wide attention for their ideas.

In 2021, a State Department official speaking on the basis of classified information told The Wall Street Journal that NewsFront "is guided by the FSB," Russia's successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB. Time magazine in 2021 described NewsFront as "by far the most successful and ambitious" Russia-led website making false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. For example, NewsFront published claims that the U.S. government created coronavirus and intentionally exported it to China.

In 2021 and again in 2022, the US Treasury announced sanctions against NewsFront, calling it in 2022 "a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet...particularly focused on supporting Russia-backed forces in Ukraine."

In February 2024 they spread news of an upcoming biopic of President Zelensky of Ukraine called “The Price of Victory”. They included videos of the actors Chuck Norris and Dolph Lundgren manipulated to appear to be wishing him success with the film.

Social media

In April 2020, according to NBC News, Facebook and Twitter deleted many pages and accounts they said were linked to "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" by Russian actors, including those linked to NewsFront and to SouthFront.

In May 2020, NewsFront was blocked on YouTube due to a violation of YouTube's Terms of Use.

In February 2022, Facebook again took action against NewsFront and SouthFront, for further activity violating their policies. According to the German Marshall Fund, the new violations involved fake profiles that helped evade the bans by posting links to mirror sites, where innocuous URLs showed content identical to that in NewsFront. In addition to mirror sites, they also used cloaking sites, that is, URLs that re-directed a browser to URLs at NewsFront.

References

  1. ^ "Treasury Escalates Sanctions Against the Russian Government's Attempts to Influence U.S. Elections". United States Department of the Treasury. April 15, 2021. Archived from the original on November 7, 2021. Retrieved February 27, 2022. NewsFront is a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet that worked with FSB officers to coordinate a narrative that undermined the credibility of a news website advocating for human rights...NewsFront was also used to distribute false information about the COVID-19 vaccine, which further demonstrates the irresponsible and reckless conduct of Russian disinformation sites.
  2. ^ Rossbach, Andreas (May 29, 2018). "Meet The Kremlin's Keyboard Warrior in Crimea". Coda Story. Archived from the original on March 6, 2022. Retrieved March 7, 2022. Germany, Europe's largest and most powerful state, has been a favorite subject for News Front's stories — usually imbued with divisive spin. A report that ran last year...claimed that thousands of teenagers, most of them 'refugees and migrants,' had started a violent rampage through the city. But the story was false, according to Correctiv, a Berlin-based media-monitoring outfit which has been following News Front's output. There had been an incident in the city, said Jacques Pezet, one of the Correctiv fact-checkers, but at most just a few dozen people had been involved and it was a mixed group, not only migrants.
  3. ^ "A fake news lab Part II: A man from the Crimea". RISE Moldova. August 28, 2020. Archived from the original on March 6, 2022. Retrieved March 6, 2022. News Front's website...is property of the Russian firm OOO МедиаГрупп Ньюс Фронт (MediaGroup News Front Ltd, as translated from Russian), which is co-owned by two men: half of its equity capital is held by Konstantin Knyrik, a native of Bakhchisaray city in the Crimea, and half is held by Mikhail Sinelin, a Russian national who had worked in the secretariat of the Russian Government..
  4. ^ "No News on the News Front". EU vs Disinformation. April 29, 2019. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved March 21, 2022. First the hard data: News Front was established in November 2014 at the web host reg.ru. It was visited by slightly below 5 million in March 2019. Half their audience is in Russia, 22 percent in Ukraine, 4.6 in Bulgaria and 3.11 in Germany.
  5. ^ "Russian propaganda in faces: who owns the Crimean Internet". Radio Free Europe. July 21, 2016. Archived from the original on March 8, 2022. Retrieved March 7, 2022. News Front was established by Mediagroup Newsfront LLC, registered in Bakhchisarai at the place of residence of one of the owners, deputy of the Bakhchisaray City Council Konstantin Knyrik. He is also the head of the agency. Russian citizen Mikhail Sinelin is listed as the second founder of Mediagroup Newsfront
  6. "Russia: the oligarchs and business figures on western sanction lists". The Guardian. March 4, 2022. Archived from the original on March 5, 2022. Retrieved March 6, 2022. Konstantin Knyrik Said by the EU to be a pro-Russian activist running MediaGroup News Front Ltd, a news website registered in the illegally annexed Crimea, he is also chief of the Crimean division of the pro-Kremlin Rodina party.
  7. "Прозрачный бизнес". pb.nalog.ru. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  8. ^ Šlerka, Josef (2022-08-11). "NewsFront: Nenávistné pozdravy z Krymu". investigace.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  9. "Julia Vityazeva". Evocation. 19 July 2022. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  10. "Masked Gunmen Seize Crimean Investigative Journalism Center". Global Investigative Journalism Network. 2 March 2014. Archived from the original on 5 March 2022. Retrieved March 6, 2022. As Russian troops streamed into Crimea, Ukraine, yesterday, masked gunmen broke into and seized the office of the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism, a hub for independent media in the region, and the Crimean investigative center.
  11. ^ Shuster, Simon (March 21, 2021). "Meet the Russian 'Information Warrior' Seeking To Discredit COVID-19 Vaccines". Time (magazine). Archived from the original on March 5, 2022. Retrieved March 6, 2022. In early March of that year, while Russian troops seized control of the region, Knyrik led a column of pro-Russian paramilitaries to the offices of the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism, which was the region's leading independent news source at the time.
  12. "Russian Troll Factory Expanded and Harassing Independent Press". Polygraph. December 10, 2018. Archived from the original on March 8, 2022. Retrieved March 7, 2022. According to Russian tax authorities' data, NewsFront.info was registered with Roskomnadzor (the Russian federal agency regulating mass media and communications) in April 2015 as a private "news agency" by a company called 'Media Group News Front.'
  13. "KNYRIK Konstantin Sergeyevich". opensanctions.org. 14 August 1989. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  14. "SINELIN Mikhail Anatolyevich". opensanctions.org. 24 November 1959. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  15. "NewsFront". opensanctions.org. 2 April 2015. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  16. ^ "Treasury Sanctions Russians Bankrolling Putin and Russia-Backed Influence Actors". United States Department of the Treasury. March 3, 2022. Archived from the original on March 6, 2022. Retrieved March 6, 2022. NewsFront is a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet that worked with FSB officers to coordinate a narrative that undermined the credibility of a news website advocating for human rights. NewsFront was also used to distribute false information about the COVID-19 vaccine. With the self-proclaimed goal of providing an "alternative source of information" for Western audiences, Newsfront is particularly focused on supporting Russia-backed forces in Ukraine.
  17. Beuth, Patrick; Brost, Marc; Dausend, Peter; Dobbert, Steffen; Hamann, Götz (February 6, 2017). "Fake News: War Without Blood". Die Zeit. Archived from the original on March 7, 2022. Retrieved March 7, 2022. Allegedly, NATO has also put 3,600 tanks into position against Russia. In January, it was reported that 700,000 Germans had left their homes in Germany because of Merkel's refugee policy. After New Year's Eve, a false report claimed that 1,000 immigrants had lit on fire a church in Dortmund. None of this is true.
  18. "Russia Has Launched a Fake News War on Europe. Now Germany Is Fighting Back". Time. August 9, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2022. News Front reporters have somehow been granted extraordinary access to the Russian armed forces. They often embed with Russian troops and paramilitaries fighting in Syria and eastern Ukraine, frequently running footage or live streams from the front lines.
  19. Šlerka, Josef (2022-08-15). "NewsFront: Jak se šíří kremelská propaganda s koronavirovou příchutí". investigace.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  20. "Disinfo Database". EUvsDisinfo. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  21. ^ "GEC Special Report: August 2020: Pillars of Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem" (PDF). United States Department of State. 2020. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 6, 2022. Retrieved February 23, 2022. News Front is a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet with the self-proclaimed goal of providing an 'alternative source of information' for Western audiences, a branding technique common among actors in Russia's disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. With reported ties to the Russian security services and Kremlin funding, it is particularly focused on supporting Russian proxies in Ukraine. News Front is one of the most blatant Russian disinformation sites, and its manipulative tactics to boost reach led to a near total dismantling of its presence on social media in early 2020.
  22. Gordon, Michael R.; Volz, Dustin (March 7, 2021). "Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 28, 2022. Retrieved February 28, 2022. Another publication, News Front, is guided by the FSB, a security service that succeeded the KGB, the official said. It is based in Crimea, produces information in 10 languages, and had nearly nine million page visits between February and April 2020, the official added.
  23. "Disinfo: US servicemen imported coronavirus intentionally into China". EU vs Disinfo. March 20, 2020. Archived from the original on March 18, 2022. Retrieved March 10, 2022.
  24. "WHO IS BEHIND MISINFORMATION ABOUT LUGAR LAB SPREAD BY NEWS FRONT AND GEWORLD?". MythDetector.ge. March 23, 2020. Archived from the original on March 25, 2022. Retrieved March 9, 2022. On 18 March 2020, News Front Georgia published an article titled "Coronavirus has not originated in China! Hello, Lugar Laboratory!" Referring to Global Research Canada and the government of China, the article alleged that the coronavirus was intentionally imported into China by US servicemen.
  25. "Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S." New York Times. 7 March 2024. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  26. ^ Collins, Ben; Kent, Jo Link (February 27, 2022). "Facebook, Twitter remove disinformation accounts targeting Ukrainians". NBC News. Archived from the original on February 28, 2022. Retrieved February 27, 2022. Facebook removed profiles related to News Front and South Front in 2020, and the company confirmed to NBC News that the new group shared connections to the accounts that were previously banned. Both websites have pushed misleading articles, questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines. The State Department identified the websites as Russian disinformation outlets in a 2020 report.
  27. "YouTube removed from its platform three Russian propaganda channels". KosovaPress. 2020-05-21. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  28. "Russia's Affront on the News: How NewsFront's Circumvention of Social Media Bans Demonstrates the Need for Vigilance". German Marshall Fund. February 4, 2021. Archived from the original on March 13, 2022. Retrieved March 9, 2022. both Twitter and Facebook suspended NewsFront accounts and banned link-sharing from the website in 2020—the outlet has innovated to avoid detection and continue spreading its content online to unwitting readers. Through a network of 'mirror sites, websites that are identical to the original NewsFront website but use innocuous domain names, NewsFront has continued to push content on Facebook and Twitter, skirting link-sharing bans and targeting audiences around the world.
  29. "All quiet on the Newsfront? Part 2". EU vs Disinfo. April 21, 2021. Archived from the original on March 10, 2022. Retrieved March 10, 2022. Finally, the third tool used by NewsFront was cloaking (or masking) domains. It means that links shared on social media by accounts connected to NewsFront looked as if they were to another website, whereas in fact they were only used as a redirect to the actual domain of NewsFront.
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