Webs of Deceit: Online Information Manipulation Networks in Bulgaria and Romania

Last modified by Elizaveta Polyakova on 2025/05/15 13:25

Published Monday 27 January 2025 at 00:00

The report explores the scope, means, and reach of Russia’s information and media capture operations in EU and NATO members Bulgaria and Romania. The comparative study covers web traffic metrics and content analysis of five leading online outlets from each country known for consistently amplifying the foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) activities of the Kremlin and its various proxies. The report contains an analysis of five key recurrent narratives that target democratic institutions, Euro-Atlantic integration, and support for Ukraine’s defense efforts against Russia’s war of aggression.

Report of CSD in English from 27 January 2025

The end of 2024 has shown once again how important it is for Romanian citizens to have the skills to distinguish between facts and opinions, to understand the workings of social media, the techniques of persuasion, to be aware of the persuasive role influencers play in public communication, and to be able to do minimal checks on the information that reaches them. For the younger generation, school is the place to teach them all these things. [+]

The following report investigates the Bulgarian branch of the Pravda ecosystem — a sprawling network of websites that floods the Internet with pro-Kremlin content targeting over 50 countries, primarily in Europe. The analysis zooms in on Bulgarian Pravda’s web architecture and capacity to influence search engine algorithms and large language models (LLMs) through mass-produced, automated aggregator websites with carefully curated content and extensive search engine optimisation (SEO). Through a combination of OSINT collection, search ranking analysis, infrastructure mapping, and other digital forensic methods, the study corroborates the hypothesis that the Pravda ecosystem targets the algorithms, recommender systems and training data used in some of the most popular online services. In addition, Pravda acts as a web-based repository for the vast volume of pro-Kremlin content published on certain Telegram channels, themselves serving as automаtic aggregators of Russian government actors and Kremlin-controlled media. The findings underscore the urgent need for coordinated countermeasures, algorithmic transparency, and enhanced informаtion resilience across Europe and beyond.

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Webs of Deceit: Online Information Manipulation Networks in Bulgaria and Romania

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