On March 18, our Association’s experts Olesya Tsybulko and Borys Babin reported about Russia-controlled empire of disinformation, that develops using models of artificial intelligence, at II Session “Respond: Addressing challenges in the media and information landscape, including disinformation” of OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting in Vienna, Austria.
Expert Tsybulko stressed in her speech that negative role of Russian state propaganda was established by the decision “Kirkorov v. Lithuania” of European Court of Human Rights and by its next judgment also, in case of “Vyacheslavova and others” on mass disorder in Odesa in May 2014 and a fire in the Trade Union Building resulting in loss of life and injuries for fifty persons.
Olesya Tsybulko pointed to facts of direct genocidal calls, translated against ethnic Ukrainians as by Kremlin media, so by Crimean collaborators, including “speaker” Vladimir Konstantinov, who made genocidal calls for the physical destruction of Ukrainians as an ethnic group.
ARC’s expert pointed on examples of anti-Ukrainian genocidal calls in the so-called “Crimean Academic Russian Drama Theater named after Gorky” in Simferopol, that staged the play “Callsign “Light”, based on the text of Muscovite Mikhail Umnov, about Russian-Ukrainian war, where the Ukrainian children deported by the aggressor also got negative references as “inferior”.
Expert stressed on the manifestations of anti-Romanism, noticed in the Crimea in the end of 2024 in statements of Russia-controlled Sevastopol “media” and Crimea propagandists, including case of Vladimir Aslanov and “Associate Professors’ case” in so-called “Sevastopol State University”.
As Russia-controlled genocidal calls are conjuncted as with disinformation so with Nazist and rasist declarations of Crimean collaborators, that are combined with allegations of Ukrainian “neo-Nazism”, ARC’s expert reminded on amendments to UN General Assembly’s resolutions 77/204, 78/190 and 79/160 Assembly “notes with alarm that the Russian Federation has sought to justify its territorial aggression against Ukraine on the purported basis of eliminating neo-Nazism”.
Regarding Russia’s usage of artificial intelligence for disinformation Olesya Tsybulko stressed the case of the global Russian propaganda network “Pravda”, administered from occupied Crimea, that has infected AI tools around the world with Russian fakes.
On his turn, professor Borys Babin recalled in his speech on the Session about Russia-initiated AI activities, reflected in the creation of hundreds of online “media”, acting without direct human participation for manipulation by Internet search systems.
Such forms of disinformation make special importance for the issue of the subject of legal responsibility in such provocation, expert added, also stressing on challenges with definition of legal regime for propaganda victims on national and international levels.
Professor Babin discussed those issues on Human Dimension Meeting fields with OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Ms Julia Haas, with experts of International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies and on side-events Shrinking Media Space: The Growing Threats to Independent Journalism and Democracy” and Support or Suppression: the Complex Role of Big Tech in Conflict Reporting”.
Also Dr. Babin discussed international legal tools of countering Russian disinformation with organisers of side-event “Media Freedom and Captured Institutions in Georgia” from “Rights Georgia”, “Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association” and “Institute for Development of Freedom of Information”.
