Claims about the death of a U.S. pilot “responsible for the strike on an Iranian school” have been circulating on Facebook since March 28.

“American pilot Taylor Jaggers was killed in a missile attack on the Al-Kharj military base in Riyadh,” the posts say, adding that the pilot had been charged with a war crime.

The claim is accompanied by a photograph and footage of the serviceman’s funeral. Bulgarian-language posts cite the Telegram channel “Kremlin_Russian” as their source, but the claim has also been published by English- and Arabic-language accounts including on Facebook as well as other social media.

Posts with the claim appear in pro-Russian groups and groups in support of Bulgaria’s former president Rumen Radev, where they have reached a potential audience of over 30 thousand users.

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Factcheck.bg reviewed the claim and found it to be false.

An American serviceman named Taylor Jaggers did indeed die in early March 2026, but he was not a pilot. He was a junior sailor and Aviation Survival Technician assigned to the Astoria Coast Guard Air Station in Oregon.

He died from injuries sustained during a rescue operation off the coast of Washington on Feb. 27. Jaggers was taken to hospital, where he died on March 5, 2026.

His Coast Guard colleagues later honoured him by promoting him to petty officer 2nd class and awarding him the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of the highest military awards for heroism during aerial flight.

The posts circulating in Bulgarian on social media include three images, but a check using the AI or NOT tool found only two of them to be authentic.

In the original images, Jaggers is wearing a uniform bearing the letters “AST,” an abbreviation for Aviation Survival Technician — a Coast Guard role responsible for operating on rescue helicopter missions.

The abbreviation USCG – United States Coast Guard  – is also visible.

In the altered image Jaggers is seen wearing a baseball hat with the inscription US Air Force. The Air Force is a distinct body from the U.S. Coast Guard and there is no explanation why a serviceman’s uniform would bear one inscription and the hat another. 

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The U.S. Prince Sultan Air Base, located near Al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia, was indeed targeted in an Iranian attack on March 28. According to international media reports, at least 15 U.S. service members were wounded in the missile and drone strike. Five were seriously injured, but there have so far been no reports of any deaths.

The strike on the Iranian primary school in the city of Minab, in which local authorities said around 170 people were killed, including many children, took place in the early hours of Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran.

After the school was hit, disinformation began to spread about the origin of the attack, including claims that the building had been destroyed by an Iranian missile. Israel said it was unaware of any operations in that part of Iran, while the United States denied targeting civilians.

According to investigations by leading international media outlets, which cited an internal Pentagon report, the United States was in fact responsible for the strike, and the school was hit by a Tomahawk missile.

Fact-checked:

It is not true that a pilot named Tyler Jaggers was killed in an attack against a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia. A person of that name was indeed killed in March 2026 but he served in the Coast Guard and was injured in a rescue operation off the coast of Washington. The photos used in the posts show the inscription “Coast Guard” on the person’s uniform.

Svilen Oprikov contributed to work on this fact-check.

Материалът It is not true the pilot who bombed school in Iran was killed in attack on a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

Authors: Linda Hourani and Svilen Oprikov

Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent traced a global fraud network that uses sick Ukrainian children to raise millions of dollars. The outlets revealed that multiple companies are involved in the scheme, including ones based in Israel and the United States.

Earlier in 2025, Factcheck.bg exposed a fraudulent fundraising campaign for the treatment of a child named Daniel, who was claimed to be suffering from a rare type of tumor and whose family was allegedly in need of financial support. After it was established that a real photograph of a child from Ukraine had been used, Factcheck.bg contacted The Kyiv Independent and launched a joint investigation into the case.

Key findings

• A network of nonprofits runs large-scale fundraising campaigns claiming to support Ukrainian children with cancer, yet less than 1% of funds raised appear to reach the children.
• These organizations are mostly based in the U.S. but maintain ties to Israel — reflected in Hebrew names and connections to a namesake organization in Israel.
• Fundraisers frequently use false information about children’s diagnoses, backgrounds, and names, raising suspicions about the legitimacy of the campaigns.
• Hope for Life, one of the key organizations behind the campaigns, admits that 70% to 80% of funds raised are spent on advertising, leaving only a small fraction for the actual cause.
• Hope for Life’s statement suggests that advertising expenses for a single child would amount to $400,000 to $550,000, which does not align with time-tested, transparent fundraising practices, raising concerns about the potential misuse of funds.

When scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, one may come across ads showing a crying child in a hospital bed, accompanied by a heartbreaking plea for donations to treat the child’s cancer. The message is always urgent, stating that a child suffers from a severe form of cancer and needs treatment in the U.S.

Those ads appear worldwide and target local audiences in languages ranging from English and German to Bulgarian, Danish, Czech, French, Croatian, and many more. But behind the heart-wrenching images, our investigation finds that most of the money raised never reaches the children it’s supposed to help.

Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent identified several children and their parents featured in these campaigns and found that they live in Ukraine with no plans to receive treatment in the U.S. Each family has received less than $2,000 out of the $600,000 to $700,000 intended to be raised. Moreover, the investigation traced the network behind the entire fundraising operation.

Campaign for a 7-year-old Daniel

Since July 2025, ads featuring a 7-year-old boy named Daniel have been circulating online. The ads, shown in countries such as the U.S., Germany, Bulgaria, and Lithuania, among others, appeal for help to cover his cancer treatment.

The campaign seeks to raise €585,796 ($690,000) via PayPal or direct credit card donations. As of Dec. 10, 2025, it has raised €532,376 ($622,669) from 15,223 donors.

The first thing viewers see is a video of a crying child lying in a hospital bed, receiving treatment, while his mother comforts him.

The campaign page features a text, reportedly written by the child’s father, describing the harrowing story of his son’s battle with cancer and appealing for donations to fund his treatment in San Diego, California.

The message begins: “I can’t stop the pain of watching him slowly disappear. I can’t take it anymore. My son is only seven, he used to run around the house laughing. Now he can barely move his legs.”

The campaign claims Daniel has diffuse midline glioma, a rare and aggressive brain cancer. Each donation is publicly displayed alongside the donor’s name and the amount contributed, with many leaving supportive messages for Daniel and his family.

The authenticity of the donations cannot be fully verified, but several donors we contacted confirmed that they did make the contributions.

Nevertheless, the campaign has faced increasing skepticism, particularly on Reddit and Facebook, where users have raised doubts about its legitimacy.

A handful of media outlets worldwide have reported on these fundraisers, flagging them as potential fraud due to unclear information about the organizations’ activities and track record, missing medical documentation, and a lack of transparency about how donations are used. However, most of the publications were unable to identify the children featured in those fundraisers.

Using a combination of reverse image searches and facial recognition tools, Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent identified 11 Ukrainian children who had been featured in these international campaigns and spoke to four families. All four were surprised to learn that such large sums had been raised for their children, as almost none of it had reached them.

Real stories behind fishy fundraising calls

The boy featured in the campaign as Daniel turned out to be a Ukrainian child named Daneil, who lives in Ukraine. We spoke to the boy’s mother, Kateryna Kotelnykova, who was shocked to learn that her son was being used in such a fundraiser, as she said that most of the information provided about him was false.

Daneil’s actual diagnosis is leukemia, not diffuse midline glioma, and he receives treatment locally in Chernivtsi, a western Ukrainian city. The family is not seeking treatment in the U.S., as the campaign claims.

“We’re being treated in Chernivtsi, and we weren’t planning to go anywhere; thank God there is no such need yet, even though the child’s condition is serious,” Kotelnykova told us.

Through our research, we found additional campaigns featuring other Ukrainian children who appear to have been photographed at the same clinic in Chernivtsi. The stories seem to be crafted in the same manner, claiming that those children found a clinic for treatment in the United States and, on average, seek to raise $650,000.

Using facial recognition and reverse image searches, we identified three more Ukrainian parents whose children were used in these campaigns. This helped us gain a clearer understanding of the entire process, from the initial outreach to the launch of the fundraiser.

A couple of parents told us they had been approached in Ukrainian hospitals by a woman named Taya, who offered financial support for their child’s treatment, or were advised by doctors to contact her.

“Taya” asks parents to complete a form with their child’s details, including medical information, and take a few photos, which she then sends to so-called foreign sponsors whose names she does not disclose to the parents. Selected children and their parents come to the clinic in Chernivtsi for professional photo and video shoots. Their parents then receive $1,200 to $1,700 in cash as one-time assistance from sponsors.

Parents sign a receipt confirming the funds have been received and give consent to the use of photos and videos for “reporting” to the sponsors. “Taya” also offers parents the option to sign an agreement authorizing the use of their child’s images and videos in fundraising campaigns.

Thinking it would bring more financial support, Kotelnykova signed without reading. “They offered their help; I agreed, since the child is sick and money is needed in any case,” she said.

Another mother, Natalya Polyanska, said she received Hr 50,000 ($1,181) after the photo and video shoot of her son Maksym in the hospital in 2024. She said she never received any more money — and was never promised any. However, Factcheck.bg and the Kyiv Independent discovered an active fundraising campaign for Maksym — who was listed as Alex — that claimed to have raised over $700,000 for his treatment. When the Kyiv Independent questioned the organization about it in November 2025, the campaign was taken down.

Parents of three children told the Kyiv Independent they agreed to the fundraising campaigns but were unaware that they would use false information. In their cases, their children’s diagnoses, background stories, and even names were altered. Besides, none of them knew the campaigns would seek to raise so much money.

The fundraisers appear to anglicize the children’s and parents’ names to make them sound more international, often changing the names completely. For example, the Ukrainian name Maksym was changed to Alex in a fundraising campaign; Serhii became Andrew, Ivan became David, and one mother’s name was changed from Anastasiia to Jessica.

“Taya”: Broker connecting Ukrainian families with fundraisers 

Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent identified “Taya” as Tetiana Khaliavka, a PR manager at the Ukrainian-Swedish medical center Angelholm in Chernivtsi.

Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent inspected the photos used in fundraising campaigns and confirmed that at least 11 Ukrainian children and their parents were photographed inside the Angelholm Medical Center. They didn’t undergo treatment there — the facility was only used for photos.

One mother reported that Taya coordinated the photo and video shoots inside the clinic, while two men who accompanied her handled the filming. She referred to them as “the father and the son.” A second mother stated there was only one man with Taya. Both testimonies suggest that the man in question is Taya’s son, Oleh Khaliavka, who also goes by the name Alex Kohen.

When The Kyiv Independent contacted him and asked about the photoshoots, he said he had been mistaken for someone else and hung up.

Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent obtained a business card that Khaliavka had given to a children’s hospital worker at a medical conference so that they could refer parents to her.

The card lists only her altered first name, “Taya,” and describes her as a “contact person for working with parents of children with cancer,” adding that she “cooperates with foreign funds providing financial assistance directly to parents.” The card bears the logo of the Chernivtsi-based charity Freedom Trust.

Publicly, Freedom Trust focuses primarily on providing humanitarian aid to civilians living near front-line areas, as reflected on its Facebook page. When The Kyiv Independent journalist, posing as someone interested in supporting the fund, first contacted Freedom Trust’s head, Ihor Lohvinov, he said that they also have a program offering one-time financial aid from sponsors to children with cancer across Ukraine. Later, he would deny it.

When the Kyiv Independent journalist met with Lohvinov in Chernivtsi, now clearly identifying as a reporter, Lohvinov strongly denied any collaboration with foreign organizations.

At the same time, he said he knows “Taya” through volunteer work and allowed the use of his organization’s name and logo, which appears on her business card. Still, he said that Freedom Trust was not actually involved in the program of connecting Ukrainian cancer patients with foreign donors, and that no money passed through it.

The Angelholm Medical Center told The Kyiv Independent that “the clinic had never organized or conducted photo or video shoots of children with cancer and their parents,” and that it had no knowledge that the photos or videos of the children taken at the clinic were used for fundraising.

They denied any involvement in fundraising campaigns for the treatment of children with cancer: “Our clinic does not carry out, initiate, support, or participate in such activities in any form.”

The clinic, however, said it was providing free short-term stays for children with cancer, who were allegedly passing through Chernivtsi, at the request of an American nonprofit.

The clinic provided The Kyiv Independent with a request it received from the American nonprofit organization Hope for Life (registered as Tikvah Lechaim Inc.) in February 2024. In it, the nonprofit was asking the clinic to provide a charitable, free-of-charge stay for a parent and a child, accompanied by a representative from Hope for Life, during their stay in Chernivtsi.

“This is to ensure a comfortable place for rest while they wait for their trip home, for approximately two to three hours,” the request states.

Angelholm Medical Center confirmed that Hope for Life directly contacted the clinic’s employee, Khaliavka, regarding these arrangements. The clinic granted its permission, allegedly not knowing that the “charitable stays” were actually photo-ops.

The clinic also said that after discovering their employee Tetiana Khaliavka’s (“Taya”) role in the campaigns, they decided to terminate her employment “in light of the facts uncovered and the use of official duties for personal purposes.”

“Taya” was coordinating staged photo and video shoots for children and their parents at the clinic, creating the impression they were receiving treatment. In reality, the children spent just a few hours over two days in the clinic, moving between rooms and changing clothes to appear as patients, one mother told us.

In a statement sent to The Kyiv Independent journalist, “Taya” said that she organized these shoots voluntarily and without pay, motivated solely by her desire to help children with cancer.

She explained that the initiative had come from the American organization Hope for Life, which approached her with the idea of collaborating to provide financial support to children in need.

Her role was allegedly limited to identifying families eligible for aid and organizing photo and video sessions upon the organization’s request. Parents told The Kyiv Independent that she also handled the signing of agreements and the distribution of one-time financial assistance.

US networks of nonprofits behind the fundraisers

Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent analyzed the websites hosting fundraising campaigns for at least 11 Ukrainian children with cancer. Contact details on these sites indicate they are operated by the following nonprofits:

• Tikvah Lechaim Inc. (the Hebrew name for Hope for Life)
• Dawn of a Child Inc.
• Sunshine for Kids Inc.
• Praying for Life Inc.
• Life’s Hope Inc.
• Shtibel Gur Ltd (Yiddish for “Gur prayer house”)
• Saint Raphael Charity Inc.
• Chance Letikva Inc. (“Letikva” translates from Hebrew as “hope”) appears as the company managing the Facebook page for a campaign supporting Daniel, one of the children.

The companies appear to be a network — some have the same president, others co-ran a fundraising campaign.

All are registered in the United States, except for UK-registered Shtibel Gur Ltd, which lists a U.S. contact address on its campaign page.

The network has ties in Israel. Campaigns are hosted on an Israeli platform. An Israel-registered Tikvah Lechaim appears to be related to the U.S. nonprofit of the same name, but didn’t manage the children’s fundraisers. An archived version of the website of the U.S.-registered nonprofit, Chance Letikva Inc., lists an address in Israel on its Hebrew-language page.

In a recent investigation into similar fundraising campaigns, the BBC traveled to the addresses listed for Chance Letikva in both the U.S. and Israel, but found no sign of the organization.

The U.S.-registered Tikvah Lechaim Inc. appears to be the central organization in the network: Their representatives were in touch, through “Taya,” with Ukrainian families whose children appeared in fundraising campaigns.

Public U.S. state registries list the directors and presidents of some of the organizations behind the fundraisers. However, the journalists were unable to find further information about them through open-source research.

Tikvah Lechaim Inc.’s 2024 Form 990 (U.S. nonprofit tax filing) lists only one person, Yomtov Stern, as president. However, a request submitted by Hope for Life to the Angelholm Medical Center in 2024 is signed by David Ognev, the organization’s director.

Using OSINT tools, Factcheck.bg and The Kyiv Independent traced this name to a 21-year-old student at the City University of New York — in the same state where Hope for Life is registered. The journalists reached out to Ognev via social media and attempted to contact him by phone, but received no response.

The nonprofits didn’t answer the Kyiv Independent’s inquiries.

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All campaigns are hosted via the Israeli platform Geev, which provides fundraising tools but reveals minimal information about the nonprofits running the campaigns. It typically lists only a landline — which doesn’t answer — and an email, allowing the nonprofits to maintain near-total anonymity.

Some of the nonprofits have standalone websites, which often feature AI-generated images and text.

Each campaign also maintains a Facebook page using targeted advertising to promote video content and maximize reach. In terms of transparency, the pages we analyzed generally disclose only one key detail: the countries of residence of the page managers, which are most often Israel and Portugal.

Interestingly, almost all of these Facebook campaign pages are blocked for users accessing them from a Ukrainian IP address — decreasing the chances of the children’s families seeing them.

Where does the money ultimately go?

The network’s online campaigns raise hundreds of thousands of dollars per child, but the families the Kyiv Independent spoke to have never seen this money. Where does the money end up?

Khaliavka, who goes under the name “Taya,” said she couldn’t say how the money was distributed, claiming her involvement ended when parents signed the agreement and received their initial small financial reward – typically $1,200 to $1,700, based on information from the parents.

From that moment, she said, the fundraisers were responsible for managing the campaigns and updating parents on their progress.

Parents we contacted confirmed that they do receive occasional calls afterward; these calls come from different international numbers, are conducted in Russian, and are often plagued by poor connections, leaving parents with little clarity on the campaigns.

When asked who was her contact, “Taya” provided a U.S. phone number for a man named Michael, who allegedly works in the customer service of the Hope for Life organization (Tikvah Lechaim Inc.). Meanwhile, OSINT tools indicate that the same number is also associated with Yomtov Stern, the alleged president of Tikvah Lechaim. “Taya” said they talk in Hebrew.

She also shared with us an example of the agreement that parents are required to sign in order to participate in the campaign. Section 4 states that families are entitled to a fee of $6,000 to $10,000, depending on the “success of the advertising campaign,” with a portion paid upfront and additional transfers “every 60 days… after deducting campaign-related expenses.”

Based on the average campaign total of €550,000 to €600,000 ($640,420 to $698,640), the promised payments amount to roughly 1 to 2% of all funds raised per child. Notably, the agreement does not disclose the total goal of the campaign.

Michael, a representative of Hope for Life, told the Kyiv Independent that 70–80% of the displayed total is allocated to advertising to promote the campaign. After platform commissions, the nonprofit receives about 18–20% of the raised money. Of that amount, it retains a portion for operational expenses. He did not specify how much ultimately reaches the parents.

“If it’s $300,000, maybe we get $70,000–80,000, or $60,000, and out of that, we have expenses — for wire and all that… to make the videos and to make the pictures, and whatever is left, we spend on the family,” Michael said.

Viacheslav Bykov, CEO of Tabletochki, Ukraine’s leading charitable foundation for children with cancer, which discloses its funders and publishes financial reports, called such ratios “outside global standards” and “completely unjustifiable.”

“Globally, I would place the acceptable (fundraising expense) ratio at roughly 10% to 25%,” he said. Tabletochki’s standard requires about 82% of funds to go directly to assistance.

Michael from Hope for Life denied wrongdoing in a phone interview, saying they “do everything by the book” and do not alter children’s diagnoses. But campaign records contradict that claim: In at least four cases this investigation verified, diagnoses were changed, including two children with leukemia who were presented as having diffuse midline glioma.

At the same time, Michael acknowledged that families’ names were routinely modified, saying parents “asked in the contract not to use the names.”

The mothers the Kyiv Independent spoke with gave a different account: None were told that their children’s names or diagnoses would be altered. The agreement provided by “Taya” contains no mention of such practices either.

Michael said the campaigns are spread across multiple websites due to payment-processing limitations: “There are other companies that help us in order to receive the funding, because you cannot receive it all in one location.”

Still, as of early December, the campaign for the seven-year-old Daniel — Daneil Kotelnykov — remained active online, continuing to raise donations.

Kateryna Kotelnykova, Daneil’s mother, said she was promised some money in November but has yet to receive anything. When The Kyiv Independent showed her the campaign page, she was surprised by the goal of the campaign — more than $690,000. As of early December, 90% of the funds had been raised.

“When I looked at the amount, I started wondering what exactly they planned to give me,” Kotelnykova said.

Natalya Kiryanova, whose son Ivan also appears in one of the campaigns, was outraged when she learned how much had been raised using false information. She said that Ivan fell ill after their home near the front line in Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, was bombed by Russian forces.

“It’s just so painfully offensive that they’re raising such large amounts, profiting off these poor children who’ve suffered psychological trauma from the war, and now, on top of that, are struggling with cancer,” Kiryanova said.

The investigation was created within the Black Sea Journalists Network, coordinated by the Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria.

Материалът Investigation: Sick Ukrainian children exploited in fraudulent charity campaigns linked to US, Israel е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

As Bulgaria’s largest fact-checking platform, Factcheck.bg remains committed to combating misinformation. Our continued collaboration with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, allows us to reach a wider audience with accurate and reliable information.

In the first ten months of the partnership, Factcheck.bg published 122 articles addressing misleading content identified on Meta platforms. We debunked various types of misinformation, including:

• Scam schemes that defraud users by withdrawing money from their bank accounts,
• Dangerous health-related disinformation, such as false claims that Switzerland banned mammography, and
• Malicious disinformation and propaganda related to the Paris Olympics, climate and energy and Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

One notable example was the debunking of a widely circulated post falsely claiming that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had banned the Lord’s Prayer from Facebook.

Our partnership with Meta aligns with the EU’s Digital Services Act, which explicitly requires Very Large Online Platforms to prevent the spread of disinformation. The importance of such efforts was recently highlighted when disinformation and voter manipulation led to the annulment of a presidential election in an EU member state.

We believe fact-checking is essential to provide EU citizens with trustworthy information, ensuring their freedom to make informed decisions. Factcheck.bg is a proud member of The European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN).

Fact-checkers neither ban nor delete content; rather, they add context and clarity to the ocean of information and disinformation we all, as users, navigate in.

In a statement published on Tuesday, EFCSN expressed concern over Meta’s decision to end its Third-Party Fact-Checking Program in the United States and strongly condemned comments by its CEO equating fact-checking with censorship. We fully support this message and believe it would be a significant mistake for Meta to abandon this well-functioning program. Such a move would not only harm democratic societies and individuals’ well-being, especially concerning health misinformation, but it could also negatively impact Meta’s reputation.

Factcheck.bg is the second third-party fact-checking partner of Meta in the Bulgarian language, following the France Presse Agency. Both organizations adhere to the highest international and European fact-checking standards, and their successful partnerships with Meta demonstrate the critical need for such initiatives.

Материалът Factcheck.bg Renews its Partnership with Meta for an Additional 12 Months е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

• The excerpt from a 1988 interview with Benjamin Netanyahu has been inaccurately translated;

• What he actually says is that the United States have a Senate and a Congress, and that Israel has a strong Jewish lobby.

Footage from an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu is being widely shared on social media with inaccurately translated subtitles. The posts claim falsely that in the 80s video, he says to the journalist that Israel controls the Congress – the supreme legislative body of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Factcheck.bg spoke to a Hebrew translator and an Israeli journalist in order to verify the content of the video.

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What does Benjamin Netanyahu say indeed?

The video in which Netanyahu speaks Hebrew initially began circulating on social media with English subtitles. Some of the posts on X have been flagged with community notes by users warning about inaccuracies in the translation from Hebrew. The interview excerpt then also started being shared in Bulgarian, containing the same discrepancies between the Bulgarian translation and Netanyahu’s actual words.

In the interview, the current prime minister of Israel does not say: “USA is not a unified block. We have the Senate, the Congress and a record-strong Jewish lobby on our side.”  Factcheck.bg spoke to Stella Behar, a translator from Hebrew, who compared Netanyahu’s words in the video to the added subtitles. She was unequivocal: the translation in the social media posts is inaccurate and tendentious.

“What he actually says in Hebrew corresponds to “There is“, Stella Behar explained, and not “We have“. 

The inaccuracy of the translation was confirmed by the reply Factcheck.bg got from the Israeli newspaper Globes. The exact translation in English should be: “USA is not a unified block. They are not a unified block. There is the Senate, there is Congress, there is a Jewish strength (according to Stella Behar and the Globes journalists this can also be translated as “a Jewish lobby” – author’s note), which is incredible, stronger than ever. There is popular opinion, there are massive forces within popular opinion opposing this policy, the best commentators. The United States will not force us to do anything.”

„In other words, he did not say that Jews control the Senate or anything like that“, Uria  Bar-Meir, a journalist at Globes, explained.

The video is part of a 1988 interview with Netanyahu for the television programme Moked. 

„It was a current affairs programme that aired on Channel One every Wednesday from the beginning of the 70s until the 90s”, translator Stella Behar explained. At that time Netanyahu was Israel’s representative to the UN.

Factcheck.bg did not manage to obtain the original full recording of the 1988 interview. Presumably, the context of the conversation could have been the tension between the United States and Israel that developed in the late 1980s over differences in their policies with regard to Palestine and its territories.

The excerpt shared on social media over the last few months was most likely taken from a short documentary overview of Netanyahu’s time in office as prime minister, broadcast on IPBS in 2021. The documentary opens with clips from the 1988 Moked interview. 

Fact-checked:

It is not true that in a 1988 interview, Benjamin Netanyahu said: “USA is not a unified block. We have the Senate, the Congress and a record-strong Jewish lobby on our side.” The English and Bulgarian translations of his words, shared on social media, are inaccurate. In the video he actually says: “USA is not a unified block. They are not a unified block. There is the Senate, there is Congress, there is a Jewish strength, which is incredible, stronger than ever.”

Translator: Vasilena Dotkova

Материалът Benjamin Netanyahu did not say his country had control over the U.S. Congress е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

Publications containing these claims were initially shared on Facebook groups with an audience of over 50 000 users. The claims were also circulated by a number of individual profiles from which they were picked up by websites such as Svobodno slovo, Plofdiv Info, Pogled.eu and Classa.bg. Those websites presented the claims as news, which were in turn reshared on social media. 

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The claims that Swedish people were killed in Poltava appeared in at least 4 articles on Pogled Info – a website that mostly publishes translations from Russian sources and is known as one of the main channels for pro-Kremlin disinformation in Bulgarian.

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What happened in Poltava on 3 September

In the early hours of the day Russia fired missiles against the Ukrainian city. Two ballistic missiles hit a military communications institute. The attack is considered one of the deadliest since the beginning of 2024. According to Ukrainian authorities 55 people were killed and 328 were injured.

In the days following the attack Russian media started spreading claims of a much higher number of casualties. In the beginning there were reports of over 200 deaths, then 500 and soon the numbers went up to over 1000. In most cases those publications cited local witnesses or pro-Russian military blogs. The Russian state news agency TASS quoted a Ukrainian politician known for spreading Russian propaganda narratives on a number of occasions, while RIA Novosti quoted information from the Russian-appointed governor of the occupied Kherson region as their only source.

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Infamous Russian propaganda outlets such as the Strategic Culture Foundation published claims that the targeted military institute had been full of  ‘foreign instructors’ and ‘mercenaries’ from Western countries.

Some Russian media based their claims on a post by Britta Ellwanger, a Swedish citizen living in Ukraine and working for the US charity organisation For Peace. Outlets such as the sanctioned RT and Argumenty i Fakti published a screenshot of a social media post by Ellwanger, in which she appears to say she lost a close friend and former Swedish classmate in the Poltava attack. The claims that a foreign representative of a humanitarian organisation ‘confirmed’ the death of Swedes in Poltava were also published on Telegram by pro-Kremlin propagandist and TV host Vladimir Solovyev, whose channel has over 1.3 million followers. The same claims were circulated in Swedish by the Russian propaganda website Pravda.se. They also reached the Bulgarian information space, again with the help of Pogled Info.

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The „evidence“ that Swedes were killed was fabricated

In her profiles on Facebook and Х Britta Ellwanger announced that she did not publish the post in the screenshot circulated by Russian media. She said that her identity had been used “in a Russian disinformation campaign.” Speaking to Swedish public broadcaster Svt, she said she did not know any Swedes in Ukraine, did not work with Swedish people and had never heard of anyone Swedish who had been hurt in the Poltava attack.

In a comment to the public television channel, the Swedish foreign ministry said they did not have any information about Swedish citizens killed or injured in the attack.

Sweden’s army and SAAB deny claims their staff were killed

Most of the posts by Bulgarian Facebook users on the issue speak of killed ‘Swedish military instructors’, as well as the loss of ‘the entire leadership of the SAAB airborne early warning and control systems’ – a phrase that sounds somewhat opaque in Bulgarian and most of it turns out to be a clumsy word-for-word translation from Russian sources. 

On 4 September the Swedish army headquarters published a statement on their website denying the claims that members of their staff had been killed in Poltava. The army press centre described the claims as a ‘typical example of disinformation.’

Factcheck.bg reached out to the SAAB corporation, whose spokesperson also denied the rumours. “The claims that employees from SAAB have been killed in a Russian attack in Poltava are false. This is seemingly part of a disinformation campaign and there is no truth to these claims,” wrote Mattias Rådström, head of media relations for the company.

Propaganda attack against ‘the minister who brought Sweden into NATO’

On 4 September, the day following the Poltava attack, Sweden’s foreign minister Tobias Billström announced he would resign at the start of the new parliamentary season. He did not give a reason for his decision, but according to Swedish media it may be due to longstanding differences between himself and prime minister Ulf Kristersson.

The Kremlin propaganda machine took advantage of this somewhat unexpected announcement, stitching it together with the false claims that Swedish military personnel had been killed in Poltava. Billström’s resignation thus came to be presented as ‘indirect proof’ that Swedish ‘military instructors’ had indeed been annihilated in the missile attack. In its news piece about the minister’s departure, the sanctioned Russian network Russia Today specifically pointed out that Billström was the person who brought Sweden into NATO.

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„Poltava all over again“

For years Sweden has been a target of Kremlin disinformation, seeking to tarnish the country’s positive international image and deepen existing divisions within Swedish society. These attacks became particularly vicious after Sweden announced it would seek NATO membership, putting an end to a 500-year tradition of non-alignment.

Following the country’s NATO accession in March, Tobias Billström’s resignation has now added a ‘cherry on top’ of the disinformation story about the killing of ‘Western military instructors’ in Ukraine. It is being used to feed Russia’s domestically and internationally promoted narrative that Sweden has reasons to regret its decision to join the Alliance, as well as its help for Ukraine as a whole.

The campaign carries an additional patriotic charge for its domestic audience, by evoking their pride of the Russian victory in the battle of Poltava in 1709. In the same area over 300 ago Russian troops led by Peter I defeated the Swedes, killing or capturing almost their entire army.

“What an irony of fate, Swedes have yet again been defeated in Poltava,” the Kremlin-controlled online edition Pravda wrote. The website quoted Russian social media users, pointing out that the soldiers who fired the missiles against Poltava were educated at a military academy named after Peter I.

Comments about ‘the second Poltava’ also found their way into publications by Bulgarian profiles circulating the false claims about Swedish casualties in the September 3 attack.

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Материалът “15 trucks of dead Swedes”: How the Kremlin’s lies about Sweden also spread in Bulgaria е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

Where are these claims being spread most actively, and is there any connection between the groups on social media where they are published?

Against wind turbines and for “neutrality”

In 2022, the municipality of Vetrino near Varna announced a moratorium on the installation of wind turbines in its territory. Several months later, the decision was declared null and void, but hostility towards green energy has continued in Vetrino and the environs in other ways.

To put it plainly, it has been launched against a specific project in the village of Neofit Rilski, Vetrino Municipality, to build dozens of wind turbines. Leading this campaign is the founder of the Varna-area attraction Historical Park, Ivelin Mihaylov, who has spread claims that wind turbines are harmful to people’s health. Fighting the wind turbines in Vetrino is gradually becoming a battle against green energy altogether, to preserve coal-fired power plants, and against military aid for Ukraine.

The jury is still out on the evidence regarding the impact of wind turbine noise on people’s sleep and moods   some studies have identified effects, while others have not. However, recent studies have found no evidence that wind turbine noise increases the risk of heart attack or stroke, congenital defects, high blood pressure, or diabetes. When it comes to suggestions that people’s proximity to wind turbines can provoke oncological diseases, such claims have been repeatedly refuted.

In addition to serving on the board of directors of the Historical Park Association, a search in the Commercial Register reveals that Ivelin Mihaylov is also involved in the management of several other companies and enterprises. One of them is Blazhenstvo [Bliss] Ltd., where Mihaylov is the manager and sole proprietor. Blazhenstvo is also listed as the publisher of the newspaper Beautiful Vetrino. On the print edition’s website, dozens of publications with false claims regarding renewable energy can be found. Ivelin Mihaylov is also the author of many of website’s articles.

In another article on the Beautiful Vetrino site, Mihaylov describes a network of “revolutionary media”, of which his newspaper is a part. Following the same model, newspapers such as Beautiful Provadia, Beautiful Vulchi Dol, Beautiful Varna, and Beautiful Velingrad have appeared, as well as the website Svoboden Glas [Free Voice]. Also part of the group, the website Suprotivata [The Resistance] defines itself in its “About Us” section as “the immune system in the battle against the infectious diseases brought in with Sodom and Gomorrah, packaged under the guise of neoliberalism, transhumanism, and the new world order”. The same site also has a section called “Green Poison”, where the authors focus on how wind energy harms people’s health.

After the start of the Russian war against Ukraine, publications calling for “neutrality”, against sending military aid to Kyiv, and repeating Russian propaganda narratives about “Nazism in Ukraine” began popping up on the websites associated with Ivelin Mihaylov. The Svoboden Glas YouTube channel features interviews with a number of public figures defending pro-Russian positions. Among them are former National Security Service (NSS) officer Nikolay Markov, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) host Petar Volgin, and analyst Boyan Chukov. Suprotivata has also been spreading false claims about Ukraine which have been debunked by Factcheck.bg in the past, like those about elevated radiation levels following an explosion at an arms depot in Khmelnytsky.

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Beautiful Vetrino exchanges content with the pro-Russian Telegram group ZaPravda, where Russian propaganda is actively shared and articles with the Russian symbol of the war against Ukraine, “Z”, are even sold. The claims shared across both channels have also been debunked by Factcheck.bg before.

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Referendums and the fight against the green transition 

Ivelin Mihaylov is also part of the Community Council of Free and Peaceful Bulgaria. This organization is collecting signatures to hold a referendum on Bulgaria’s “peace and sovereignty”. It also stands behind recent “March for Peace” demonstrations, where a number of Russian slogans about the war have been repeated, and Russian flags were even displayed at some of the events.

Free and Peaceful Bulgaria maintains a Facebook following with a group of over 30,000 members. It has a total of 20 administrators. In addition to Surnela Vodenicharovа, who is part of the organization’s committee for initiatives and one of its most active members, a profile by the name of Ivelin Lyudmilov Mihaylov also partly manages this group. Some admin profiles associated with Mihaylov’s various websites and companies. Among them are Detelina Parusheva, who is part of the Beautiful Vetrintsi team, as noted in their profile, and Ivelin Asenov Alexandrov, who has stated in his social media profile that he works as a journalist at Svoboden Glas. Rumen Yankov has stated on his Facebook profile that he is an activist in the Vuzdigane [Rising Up] Foundation, where Ivelin Mihaylov also plays a managing role. Four other admin profiles indicate that they work for Together   an insurance broker  Ivelin Mihaylov is on its board of directors. The Together logo is also displayed in the videos on the Svoboden Glas YouTube channel.

The Free and Peaceful Bulgaria Facebook group frequently spreads a range of false claims about the “threats” and “harm” of the green energy transition. Some of these have been debunked previously by Factcheck.bg — including one that wind turbines use diesel fuel to produce energy and another that Germany will keep its coal-fired power plants open, unlike Bulgaria.

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During the protests by miners and energy workers to preserve the Mini Maritsa Iztok plant, the Free and Peaceful Bulgaria group and its associated “Referendums” page declared themselves to be among the protest organizers.

Another Facebook page spreading disinformation about renewable energy sources is the Human–Nature–Life Association. A fact-check by Bulgarian National Television (BNT) in February this year debunked one of the claims published on the association’s social media page — that life is incompatible with wind turbines.

A search in the Commercial Register reveals that the association’s spokesperson is Krasimira Katinchаrova. This name appears alongside articles on the Beautiful Vetrino website, and the profile of a man with the same surname (Rumen Katinchаrov) is one of the administrators of the Free and Peaceful Bulgaria Facebook group. The association also participated in the farmers’ protests against the import of Ukrainian grain which took place at the end of 2023. The Human–Nature–Life Association organized a press conference in April 2023, announcing opposition to the construction of wind farms in the country.

Paid ads against green energy

Another page called “Bulgaria”, also among the admins of the Free and Peaceful Bulgaria group, has over 170,000 followers on Facebook. The page shares posts on important topics of the day in the country, information about Historical Park, and advocacy to attract signatures for the Free and Peaceful Bulgaria referendum campaign. Facebook’s Ad Library advertising infrastructure shows that the “Bulgaria” page has been using paid social media advertising to call for protests and gather signatures for organizing the referendum.

Another Facebook page spreading disinformation about the green transition through paid advertising is “The Robbed Energy Sector — Why Do Bulgarians Pay the Most?” Dozens of posts with false or unsubstantiated claims, including that there will be no electricity in Bulgaria without coal-fired power plants and that pollution is decreased through active thermal power plants, are being spread on Facebook with paid advertising, as shown by a search of the AdLibrary.

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The page “The Robbed Energy Sector — Why Do Bulgarians Pay the Most?” is also an admin for a Facebook group with a similar name: Why Do Bulgarians Pay the Most? The group has just over 100 members and is currently inactive, but among its recent posts there is an invitation for members to join a new group with the same name. It already has nearly 7,000 members and changed from its former name, Russia, to Why Do Bulgarians Pay the Most? on June 15, 2023.

Disinformation about green energy is spreading through various channels on social media and online spaces in Bulgaria. This investigation reveals the connections between several of the most popular such channels on Bulgarian social media and their connection to the pro-Russian messages also circulating in the country. Factcheck.bg investigations have repeatedly demonstrated that a significant portion of Russian propaganda narratives includes messages against the West and its policies. One of the most targeted policies of the European Union is the Green Deal and the associated establishment of renewable energy sources in EU countries. Through online disinformation methods, these messages are actively spread in the Bulgarian online environment.

Vasilena Dotkova contributed to this piece.

The material was created with the support of SCIENCE+.

Материалът Network of social media groups spreading disinformation about green energy, war in Ukraine е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

A network of groups with a shared vision, messages, and administrators

The groups are hard to tell apart from each other visually, almost always featuring a cover photo that repeats the name, written in capital letters, on a colored background.

All the groups also share common administrators. These are most often the profiles of Tsvetan Bonev and Yordan Bonev. In addition, the groups are also administered by Facebook pages which look identical and produce similar content.

Factcheck.bg’s investigation has identified 17 such pages, which administer a total of over 80 groups. Most of the pages are registered on Facebook as news or media profiles. A common thread connects both the names and descriptions of these pages. Most present themselves as an “alternative” source of information: Antimedia, Objective News, Antinews, Secret Knowledge, and Social Critique, among others.

Who are the group administrators? 

Formerly named T.B., Tsvetan Bonev’s profile features personal photos of an individual bearing a clear resemblance to a person by that name who is the son of Ventsislav Angelov, a.k.a. Chicago. Angelov is the chairman of the “Truth and Only the Truth” party founded in 2020. The Ruse man was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his involvement in organizing an international drug trafficking channel from Peru to Spain. After hiding abroad for several years, he was extradited from Germany to Bulgaria, where he served his sentence.

Yordan Bonev’s profile displays personal photos and videos where Bonev uses his own name. Yordan Bonev is also the son of Ventsislav “Chicago” Angelov. He gained popularity in 2013 when he and Biser Milanov were arrested in the first days of the protests against the Oresharski government in 2013. Nikolay Barekov, then executive director of TV7, was also with them. Milanov and Bonev were subsequently taken in for hooliganism and provocations during the protests. Yordan Bonev later reached out to the press and institutions, claiming it was with the mayor of Sofia’s Mladost neighborhood, Desislava Ivancheva, who had been preparing a ‘coup’.

Fresh additions to the network

On February 4th of this year, one of the more popular groups in the network renamed itself from WE WANT THE RESIGNATION OF THE DENKOV – GABRIEL CABINET to We Want the Resignation of the National Traitors from the Coalition.

Since February 5th, a profile named Nikolay Barekov, Enlightened Journalist has been actively posting within that group as an administrator, alongside Tsvetan Bonev, Yordan Bonev, and one of the pages. The group has nearly 20 thousand members.

Over the past several weeks, Tsvetan Bonev’s profile has also been sharing links to the Barekov News (BNews) channel on Telegram, urging users to join “our Telegram channel”. The profile Nikolay Barekov, Enlightened Journalist also shares links to the BNews website within the group. A fact-check by Factcheck.bg showed that the domain bnews.bg is registered to a company named M Online Ltd. According to data from the Commercial Register, its manager and sole proprietor is Maria Kalendarska.

This is not the only group within this network where the profile Nikolay Barekov, Englightened Journalist routinely spreads false claims. An investigation by Factcheck.bg from August 2023 shows that the same profile has used several groups in the network to share the false claim that “Bulgaria is under Russian siege in the Bay of Burgas”.

What messages are being spread?

The network gained initial momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. Messages in the groups sowed doubt about the legality and effectiveness of vaccines. With the introduction of the EU’s Digital Green Certificates to certify one’s recovery or vaccination status, the groups started to exploit and stoke people’s resentment over restrictions. In total, 17 of the groups in the network disseminated disinformation about the pandemic, as shown by Factcheck.bg’s investigation.

Since February 24, 2022, attention has been focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Factcheck.bg has uncovered a large number of groups, part of the same network, expressing clear support for Russia — 30 in total. In all of them, disinformation about the war is being spread through the methods described earlier: by publishing content from websites with domains that change every few months. Currently, they frequently republish posts from the personal profile of Yordan Bonev and the National Unity page.

However, regardless of the topic, the main target of these groups since 2021 has been the regular governments formed by Bulgarian MPs. It is notable that during this period almost no groups in the network have criticized the management of the caretaker governments appointed by President Rumen Radev. Only two groups sharing similar messages exist: DECEIVED AND MISLED BY RADEV AND KIRIL PETKOV and I DO NOT SUPPORT THE AMERICAN AGENT RUMEN RADEV.

The majority of groups being administered by this network have made calls for the overthrow of the government. Initially, this included the governments of GERB, BSP, ITN, and DB between December 2021 and June 2022; later on, the Denkov–Gabriel caretaker government was targeted. In total, there are 43 groups with such messages.

Among the groups with a domestic political focus, there are “broad-spectrum” anti-systemic messages, such as IT’S TIME FOR A SYSTEM CHANGE! NO PARTIES and THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE! WE ARE AGAINST ANY POWER AGAINST THE PEOPLE, a series of different variations of demands for resignation, imprisonment, etc. directed at former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov or the current government (one of the most popular groups at the moment has over 50 thousand members and demands the resignation of the Denkov–Gabriel cabinet), as well as calls for the leader of the Vazrazhdane party Kostadin Kostadinov to be nominated as prime minister. However, this group changed its name and focus in June 2023 and is now an entertainment group for fans of Bulgaria’s reality series The Bachelor.

Among all the attempts to promote “national unity” within this network composed of groups posting on various topics, the most successful one has been REFERENDUM AGAINST THE EURO! LET’S KEEP THE BULGARIAN LEV , administered by the two profiles of Tsvetan Bonev and Yordan Bonev (the group has changed its name several times since its creation in October 2022, but these changes are only stylistic). In less than two months, it had gathered nearly 78 thousand members. Today they number over 83 thousand.

How the network operates

The National Unity page and Referendum against the Euro group began working in parallel, with content being shared from one to the other; links to websites marked as unreliable by Facebook’s algorithm were minimized by the end of 2023 and entirely removed by late February 2024.

These groups operate through internal “promotion circles” within other already popular groups. The admins post almost identical content, inviting the members of one group to join a newly created one and often urging them to invite their friends, as well.  

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This constant generation of new groups could be explained by Meta’s policy to reduce the visibility of certain posts (demotion) so that they reach fewer people. Reasons for downgrading the visibility of a profile, group, or publication can vary: low-quality content, unoriginal (foreign) content, clickbait content, proven false content, or content whose distribution is artificially increased through the creation of a network of seemingly different pages. The posts in the groups administered by Tsvetan Bonev meet several of Facebook’s criteria for reducing visibility. With the cessation of sharing links to websites that Facebook’s algorithm may detect as unreliable, the largest group against the introduction of the euro in Bulgaria has been active for over a year and is gaining new followers.

This model demonstrates how Facebook pages and groups can be used to gather large groups of users who are flooded with specific suggestions and redirected to new groups and pages, according to the organizers’ current needs. Bypassing the social network’s algorithms by simulating authentic user activity allows them to deceive people into believing that there are a large number of spontaneous actions by different users. In reality, it involves an organized team of a small number of profiles and pages that manage, moderate, and fill the groups in the network with harmful content.

This article was researched with the support of SCIENCE+.

Материалът Network of Facebook groups spreading disinformation е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

“Digital enslavement”, “digital Gulag”, “digital prison”, and “electronic leash” are just some of the dramatic epithets used to describe the onset of an Orwellian dystopia wherein Big Brother not only watches us from around every corner but also has complete access to our money and thoughts.

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Why conspiracy theories never go out of style

Every conspiracy has a simple setup: the bad guys (or a group of bad guys) hatch diabolical plans against ordinary good people, but there is always an individual who can rise above to expose the conspiracy and a hero to defeat the monster. Essentially, populist discourse follows the same lines — an evil elite versus a noble populace. That’s why conspiracies are so well-loved and often used by populist parties (representing, of course, the hero’s side).

And since the traces of this storyline stretch back to mythology and fairy tales, it is irresistible. Moreover, in such a complex and confusing world, it provides the audience with a simple and understandable explanation for every problem while simultaneously relieving “ordinary people” of any real responsibility.

The other reason conspiracy theories are enduringly popular is that, unlike disinformation, conspiracies are not concerned with facts. Disinformation, whether entirely false, partially false, or manipulatively interpreted information, still has some factual basis, i.e., it can be checked against existing facts.

Conspiracy theories, however, do not operate with facts and are not interested in them — at their core is the idea that nothing is verifiable or provable, and this is precisely the evidence which serves to validate such narratives.

What they do have in common is their deliberate dissemination (of disinformation or conspiracies), which aims to sow confusion and division in society, discourage people, and undermine the legitimacy of democratically elected institutions.

The European Union is a convenient “bad guy” in all kinds of anti-globalist conspiracies, having long been the target of dissatisfaction with globalisation and its consequences for the lives of European citizens. The COVID-19 pandemic revived conspiracy theories about a global plan for population control on the part of both national governments and global elites — from Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum to the EU. Whether through restricting the right to movement, Digital Green Certificates or supposed microchipping via vaccines, it all boils down to control over humanity.

Conspiratorial thinking deliberately swaps the word “governance” with “control”.

Thus, the very idea of a democratic state is replaced — rather than a government of elected representatives, we are being controlled by puppets of the so-called global elite. This is a lens through which an array of issues can be interpreted: from domestic political debates and Russia’s war against Ukraine to the introduction of digital documents and currencies.

The new European Digital Identity Wallet has provided the perfect pretext to rehash the same narrative about attempts (by the government, Brussels or “globalists”) to impose total control over humanity.

Popular Bulgarian Facebook posts warn that e-wallets only seem to be voluntary, which is untrue.

Other posts draw a direct analogy with vaccines and the Chinese social credit system.

The claim that vaccines (or vaccination certificates) are mandatory is false. The link between digital COVID certificates, digital identification and digital currencies is nothing new — back in 2022, there was an attempt to instill in people the idea that the EU was planning to force vaccination and introduce ATMs with QR codes from which money could be withdrawn using a vaccine certificate.

As for the comparison with China, we should ask ourselves the extent to which a union of 27 sovereign democratic states could ever act as a state with a single-party communist regime. Leading up to the EU regulation’s approval, there were many discussions and concerns expressed about security risks and the potential for member states to obtain a means of surveillance and control — national governments, not “Brussels”. The digital wallet’s rollout will not be the end of this process. Since the technology will be open-source licensed, anyone can examine and test the proposed technological structure for errors or security vulnerabilities.

As is often the case when it comes to the EU, this conspiracy did not originate in Bulgaria but was “imported”.

In this instance, the primary source is a Dutch influencer with conspiratorial and far-right views who published the same video with identical commentary on X (formerly Twitter). The post has 1.2 million views on X and has been reposted 12 thousand times. It has been translated into several different languages, allowing it to grow more widespread.

She has spoken out on the same topics during the pandemic, including vaccination, and appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show while he was still a host at Fox News.

Eva Vlaardingerbroek is 27 years old. According to her LinkedIn profile, she is a Dutch political and cultural commentator and legal scholar. She obtained her master’s degree in law from Leiden University and started a PhD before realising that her true calling was not in academic work but in the “culture war.” Accordingly, she has taken it upon herself to become “a conservative voice for freedom and justice in the Western world.”

Another outspoken “imported” proponent is an Australian politician, Ralph Babet. He is the only senator from United Australia, a conservative populist and nationalist party. A video of Babet with Russian subtitles is being circulated in Bulgaria.

“What happens when the government blocks your access to money or services as punishment?” the senator rhetorically asks, emphasising digital currency as a means of control.

In fact, there is no direct connection between digital identification and digital currency. People already use digital identity verification for various services through different applications, sometimes without being fully aware of where they are sharing their data or what happens to it. The EU has decided to make this happen through a single application (e-wallet) so that each owner has full control over the data they share. At no stage will “Brussels”(i.e. the EU) have control over our identity, nor will it be able to manage, erase or control it, as conspiracy theorists have threatened.

The long arm of the Kremlin

Digital identification is one of the three pillars upon which the global government stands, along with digital currency and “actions against climate change”, or so claims an article published on the Bulgarian website Kritichno [Critical].

The article links to a website called Zero Hedge, which was initially founded as a financial blog. The site has transformed into a source and disseminator of conspiracy theories. The author of the original text is Tyler Durden. In fact, this is a pseudonym borrowed from the character played by Brad Pitt in the movie Fight Club. The text can be perceived as a manifesto, laying out a “global government” conspiracy aimed at “full control over every aspect of all people’s lives on the planet”.

In February 2022, less than 10 days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Associated Press published an article in which unnamed American intelligence agents connected Zero Hedge with the dissemination of Kremlin propaganda.

The reason for this was the site’s regular publication of content from the centre of Russian propaganda, the Strategic Culture Foundation, leading up to the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Their goal was to insinuate that the USA was spreading panic over a potential attack on Ukraine and that Washington and NATO were the ones preparing for war, not Russia.

The Russian Strategic Culture Foundation regularly supplies Bulgarian media outlets with news and information.

“Global elites” and the “global government” feature prominently in the “analyses” offered by the publication, which spews out conspiracy theories on any and every topic.

Nor has the “global digital Gulag” escaped the attention of one of the site’s most prolific authors, Valentin Katasonov.

The author reflects on the “mysterious” abbreviation DPI: Digital Public Infrastructure.

On the UN Development Programme website, under whose auspices the initiative is being developed, the concept is explained as “a combination of networked open technological standards built for public interest”. It does not refer to a specific project but rather a comprehensive philosophy regarding the development of digital technologies to ensure their comprehensive accessibility and applicability.

The initiative has received full support from the G20, the group of 19 countries and 2 international organisations, including Russia.

However, Katasonov interprets everything exactly in reverse —  that the rollout of digital identification is intended not to give people access to social services, but to take away that access and to establish a “brave new world”, as in the novel by Aldous Huxley, where people are divided into castes according to social status and, perhaps, depending on human behaviour. This will be accomplished through a social ranking awarded to each individual, explains Katasonov, adding that “in this respect, the Chinese comrades have made the greatest progress”.

Katasonov emphasises that the project’s leadership comes from the highest level, comprising the UN, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It also enjoys support from the European Union, the IMF, and the World Economic Forum.

Conspiracies about global total population control, with some of or all those players above in an active role, have gained widespread popularity throughout the pandemic. The conspiracy about the planet’s “depopulation” and theories on the “Great Reset” or “New World Order” are actively being exploited by various forces and actors — from the propaganda machinery of the Kremlin to the darkest conspiratorial corners of Q.

Conspiracy theories are an easy tool for manipulating and deceiving people because they provide simple and comprehensive explanations for complex and manifold processes and phenomena. They exploit people’s legitimate fears but use unfounded or outright fictitious arguments. When it comes to digital identification, this fear relates to external control over our lives. It is rooted in the virtual digital environment.

Simultaneously, however, millions of people voluntarily provide their data to various platforms, applications, or companies—whether to buy a product, play a game, or simply take a Facebook quiz to find out which movie star they look like. In the absence of a global conspiracy to get us, the price we pay for this pleasure is our data.

Read about conspiracy theories about digital currencies in the next analysis in the “Europe on Conspiracies” series.

Everything on Factcheck.bg can be freely republished. You must cite the source and author’s name, as well as provide a link back to this publication.

Материалът Europe of Conspiracies: “The Digital Gulag” е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

All of them emphasise the absence of any link whatsoever between the politician’s death and Putin’s regime, while featuring plotlines often verging on conspiracy theory.

These anti-narratives about Navalny bring together all the propaganda theses that the Kremlin uses to discredit not just the image of its political opposition, but the very idea of a democratic opposition in general. Like everything that comes from liberal democracy, the opposition is also morally degraded, “sexually deformed”. To be in opposition to the government means to be a traitor, an enemy of the state writes historian Timothy Snyder in his book The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. And if you are a traitor and an enemy, then inevitably you are working with other enemies of Russia — the West, the USA, and the CIA.

Navalny’s death as Western provocation

The news of Navalny’s death arrived during the opening of the Munich Security Conference and, according to the Kremlin, this was no mere coincidence. So, the story goes, the opposition leader died “right on time” — on the eve of the second anniversary of the attack on Ukraine (i.e., the special military operation) and a month before Russia’s presidential elections. This was also after Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson had had a “amazing effect on the world”, according to RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

Most state leaders reacted immediately, directly or indirectly pointing to Putin’s regime as responsible for the death of the opposition leader. For Moscow, these reactions are a convenient pretext to declare that the West was “prepared for the news” and that another campaign against Russia was now underway.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov described the leaders’ statements as “hysterical, absolutely inappropriate, and unacceptable”.

“The immediate reaction of NATO leaders is self-explanatory”, wrote Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, on Telegram. Minutes later, in her next post, she further developed her thesis that these reactions were the result of a “premade methodology” and employing the old strategy to “just blame Russia for anything”.

“Our opposition isn’t an opposition; it’s a cult. The tell-tale signs of a totalitarian cult are there (…). All these cult members in Munich were prepared; they even had obituaries ready”, commented on the death of Navalny Vladimir Solovyov, one of the Kremlin’s favorite propagandists, in his show. He added that he didn’t think he was violating Christian values by not speaking well of the deceased.

At the same time, there has also been a campaign to discredit the West. It is suggested that behind the “feigned interest” in Navalny, other goals such as imposing sanctions and seeking political propaganda are evident.

The West is accused of Russophobic prejudices and applying double standards against Russia. The most commonly used “counterpoint to Navalny” is Julian Assange, who is serving a sentence in the UK.

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Foreign intelligence operative

The narrative that only the West has an interest in the elimination of Navalny goes hand
in hand with the story of Navalny as a “pawn of the West”, an agent, and a traitor. The Russian activist assumed this “role” as early as 2020, after the unsuccessful attempt to poison him.

An investigation by Bellingcat reveals that his poisoning was carried out by Russian special services. Commenting on these revelations, Putin, laughing, asked: “But why would they want to poison him? Who would it serve?” He described the publication as a “fabrication” that does not represent “any investigation but rather the legitimization of information from American intelligence agencies”. Thus, the narrative that Navalny is connected to foreign intelligence agencies, in this case the CIA, was already an “official” one.

A year later, the Kremlin-funded and EU-sanctioned Russian media RT published a video claiming to show Alexei Navalny meeting with an agent of British intelligence services to seek funding to organize a color revolution in Russia. Regardless of the fact that, according to the Russian media itself, the person in the footage is not Navalny, he was already labeled as an “MI6 agent”.

Another “convenient version” about Navalny’s poisoning is that he either ingested the poison himself or that his doppelgänger was used. This narrative has gained widespread traction in English-language bot accounts under posts by Alexei Navalny and his team.

The Kremlin is not only attempting to discredit its main opponent but also to diminish his value as a political activist. One of the selected tactics of the Russian authorities is to avoid mentioning Alexei Navalny by name. Thus, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has referred to him as the “Berlin patient”, a nickname also used by Putin, which is still being used even after his death. In subsequent statements, Peskov described Alexei Navalny as a “marginal quasi-opposition” player, someone who does not pose a political
threat to the authorities and is not worth paying attention to.

Navalny’s insignificance has also been suggested in Bulgaria — by politicians and in social media posts. The question “Why are you bothering us with Navalny?” has been juxtaposed with “issues important to the Bulgarian agenda”.

Extremist and criminal

In the news release about the death of Alexei Navalny, all official Russian sources have emphasized that he was on the list of terrorists and extremists authored by Rosfinmonitoring.

The narrative of Navalny as a “criminal, extremist, and terrorist” is extremely
characteristic of the Kremlin regime. One of Putin’s most active opponents must be portrayed as a person who cannot be trusted, who does not obey the laws, and is driven by “unclean” political ambitions.

Before his death, the Russian activist had accumulated sentences totaling 30 years in prison on various trumped-up charges aimed at limiting his political influence in Russia. The first cases against him began as early as 2013 and were for embezzlement of state
property and “fraud”. The last six accusations for various “manifestations of extremism” since August 2023 brought him a 19-year sentence, which he served in various prisons under strict conditions.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) founded by him was declared an extremist organization and included in the list of “foreign agents” because “under the guise of liberal slogans”, organizations associated with Navalny were “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the socio-political situation”. Many of his associates were also convicted on charges of extremism.

“The Merry Widow”

Posts on social media have further discredited Navalny’s image by accusing his wife of indecent behaviour.

The narrative of the “laughing”, “made-up”, “unconcerned” widow Yulia Navalnaya serves two purposes simultaneously. It suggests that beneath her behavior not only lies disrespect toward her deceased husband (disregard for traditional values) but also a reason for his murder (a criminal motive).

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On the very day of her husband’s death, photos of Yulia Navalnaya that were either manipulated or taken out of context began circulating on social media. In one of them, she is wearing beach shorts alongside an unfamiliar man. The implication is that the photo was taken on the day of her husband’s death and suggests romantic involvement. AFP’s investigation has already established that the image is from 2021 and was taken from the Instagram account of businessman Evgeny Chichvarkin, a close friend of Navalny and his main sponsor. In another photo, using Photoshop, Alexei Navalny has been replaced with the businessman. The original shows Yulia Navalnaya embracing her husband in court.

Another photo, which her husband was cropped out of, and falsified documents link Navalnaya to Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev. It has been claimed that the materials were disseminated by a former employee of FBK on Instagram. Factcheck.bg found that her profile no longer exists but discovered the same information on the website IntelDrop. Factcheck.bg has repeatedly written about the disinformation spread by it.

We managed to figure out the booking numbers from the two bookings used in that story and accessed them on https://t.co/WiPYdQ6lAS, showing they were actually for 2024 dates and the bookings were cancelled. pic.twitter.com/W4dzCzqoso

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) February 27, 2024

The documents shown are invoices from Booking.com, supposedly “proving” that Grozev and Navalnaya spent vacations together in Nice and Chamonix. According to Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, the document shown corresponds to a canceled reservation for April 2024.

After Yulia Navalnaya announced that she would continue her husband’s work, her name appeared in a new fabricated story. It has been claimed that the mother of the deceased politician — Lyudmila — sent an audio message to the widow in which she forbade her from tarnishing her son’s name and accused her of appearing “shamelessly and publicly in society with other men”, claiming Yulia had assumed all of Alexei’s property but had not actually been married to her son since 2021.

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According to Ilya Ber, editor-in-chief of the Russian website Provereno Media, the voice of Lyudmila Navalnaya was falsified; older statements she made were used for this purpose. The recording was published on the Telegram channel Signal, which, according to the journalist, is linked to the “propaganda network of Kristina Potupchik, financed through the administration of the Russian president”. The photo accompanying the “statement”, also spread in the Bulgarian online space, was taken from a recent video of Navalny’s mother,in which she called for her son’s body to be handed over to her immediately, Factcheck.bg’s verification showed.

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Материалът Navalny’s death mobilized the Kremlin’s entire propaganda arsenal е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.

The original Facebook video was published on 11 December 2023. The date is visible in some of the posts sharing the footage over the last few days. Regardless of that, users claim the video shows ‘the beginning of Iran’s attack against Israel’.

Factcheck.bg examined the footage and found that it is part of a video simulation. Text in Chinese in the upper left corner of the screen says: ‘Game screen is for entertainment only’. Some elements in the video are not fully realistic – for example the puffs of smoke that appear when air defence missiles intercept a target and the way they disperse after each explosion.

This is not the first case of videogame footage being presented as actual imagery from a military conflict. Fact-checks by AFP and Reuters from last year found that posts of this type were especially common in October, in the days following the Hamas attack in Israel. The videos circulating back then were found to be from Arma 3, a videogame developed by the Czech company Bohemia Interactive.

Our team contacted the company to confirm if the video circulating among Bulgarian Facebook users was also from Arma 3 but by the time of publication a definitive confirmation had not been received.

Due to the frequent use of footage from the game for disinformation purposes, in October 2023 Bohemia Interactive published a press release warning users to be vigilant. The press release also contains concrete tips from the game developers on how to spot the CGI imagery.

The advice says that as a rule videogame footage used for disinformation contains night-time shots, because darkness covers up the insufficiently realistic details in the videos. Another tip is that the game interface often contains in-game messages or text that can still be visible in the videos, usually at the edges or in the corners of the frame. Even advanced game graphics typically have issues depicting explosions, smoke, fire and dust in a fully realistic way, which is why details of that kind can be a useful clue for spotting CGI footage.

According to Arma 3 developers, in the past footage from the game has been presented as videos from real-life conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine and even India and Pakistan, but more recently it has been widely used to make claims about the war in Ukraine.

After the April 13 attack the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) published an official video, showing Iran’s drones and missiles actually being intercepted by air defence. The video can be useful for the purpose of comparison against the CGI footage.

Israelis’ reality in the last hours: pic.twitter.com/VXeHM8WqJi

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) April 14, 2024

According to official IDF information, during the attack the air defence system intercepted 170 drones and 30 cruise missiles, none of which entered Israeli territory, and 120 ballistic missiles, only few of which managed to enter Israeli territory.

Svilen Oprikov contributed to research on this fact-check.

Материалът This footage is from a video game and predates Iran’s attack against Israel е публикуван за пръв път на Factcheck.bg.