Despite a ban on Russian media outlets in Greece in line with EU sanctions, pro-Kremlin content often finds its way into the country’s news as fringe claims are ‘laundered’ into mainstream outlets.
A report splashed across Greek online media last month declared sensationally that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s parents were being investigated for corruption, after $11 million dollars was found in their bank accounts.
It wasn’t true and wasdebunkedby Ellinika Hoaxes, a Greek fact-checking organisation. Yet the story wasn’t just published by fringe pro-Russian sites such as Pronews. It was also a highly popular Greek-language site belonging to the DPG Digital Media Group. DPG is owned by Dimitris Giannakopoulos, a businessman and the owner of basketball club Panathinaikos BC, who issympathetic to Vladimir Putin
Some of the reports were accompanied by a video taken from a Russia-friendly X account which purported to be fromEurope Today, a show from French pan-European TV news network, Euronews. But as Ellinika Hoaxes pointed out, the Euronews logo in the video is different from the regular one, which has a blue background and white letters and not a white background with blue letters.
In its debunking, Ellinika Hoaxes pointed out that the made-up Zelensky story was “yet another case of fabricated fake news” originating from a Russian disinformation network,Matryoshka. Also known as Operation Overload, Matryoshka is a coordinated Russian propaganda network that creates and spreads fake news and videos, deepfakes and memes using logos of well-known Western media outlets.
Source: balkaninsight.com
