MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. Great Britain and NATO are seeking to recruit Russian mass media to conduct anti-Russian propaganda, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
"We see that a hunt has been launched for Russian-language media and media of Russian compatriots, to recruit them into the anti-Russian ranks. We see that serious funds were used to finance projects and programs geared to form secret blogger networks in the Russian-language segment of social networks. It is being done also in order to create conditions for both meddling in our country’s affairs and for working with the diaspora abroad to set people at odds," she said at the 7th World Congress of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad.
Thus, according to Zakharova, Great Britain and its NATO partners are seeking to undermine the authority of Russian media and information sources. She did not rule out the UK’s lavish support to Russian non-government organizations and mass media may indicate a deliberate strategy of meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs and policy.
"We are not just saying it based on analytics, we receive access to evidence. This February, the Anonymous community released a whole archive of British Foreign Office documents evidencing the fact that London supports independent media, new information proliferation means via mediators. Corresponding Western, in particular British resources are used to introduce new technologies for influencing and manipulating public opinion. These documents expose facts of direct bribing people who call themselves ‘influencers’ or journalists - not when people promote some information materials as advertising and do it for money, but when it is done with the understanding that this is disinformation," she noted.
She recalled that a plan of work of the British embassy in Russia for 2019-2020 was leaked not long ago. "There are dozens of Russian portals and non-government organizations there. But in public, Britain claims it is developing independent mass media," she added.