TIMES INVESTIGATION Russians spread fake news over Oxford coronavirus vaccine
Officials suspected of ‘contemptible’ online ploy
Manveen Rana | Sean O’Neill, Chief Reporter
Friday October 16 2020, 12.01am, The Times
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mages portraying the Oxford project’s work as a “monkey vaccine” were shown in Russia on the Vesti News programme, described as the equivalent of Newsnight
A Russian disinformation campaign designed to undermine and spread fear about the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine has been exposed by a Times investigation.
Pictures, memes and video clips depicting the British-made vaccine as dangerous have been devised in Russia and middlemen are now seeking to “seed” the images on social media networks around the world.
The crude theme of the distorted images is that the vaccine, millions of doses of which will be manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Astrazeneca, could turn people into monkeys because it uses a chimpanzee virus as a vector. The campaign is being targeted at countries where Russia wants to sell its own Sputnik V vaccine, as well as western nations.
It has the potential to damage not just the Oxford programme but the wider global effort to protect against the virus by encouraging conspiracy theorists and the anti-vaccination movement.
“Misinformation is a clear risk to public health,” Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of Astrazeneca, said. “I urge everyone to use reliable sources of information, to trust regulatory agencies and to remember the enormous benefit vaccines and medicines continue to bring to humanity.”
A Whitehall source described the disinformation as “reckless and contemptible behaviour that could lead to real damage to people’s health”. They added: “This sort of lie fundamentally harms all of us around the world and we need to be alert to identify and counter this kind of activity to support the provision of factual information for all people about Covid-19 and vaccines.”
The full story of the attack on the Oxford vaccine will be told today on the Stories of our times podcast. The images were passed to The Times by someone involved in the campaign who was concerned at the damage it would do to public health efforts.
It is not clear if the propaganda attempt was directly authorised by the Kremlin but there is evidence that some Russian officials were involved in its organisation and dissemination.
Ken McCallum, MI5’s new director-general, said this week that his service was involved in protecting British vaccine research against attacks. “The global prize of having the first usable vaccine is a large one,” he added.
The whistleblower said that a key aim was to place the images on western websites and in countries such as India and Brazil where Russia was trying to market its own vaccine.
There is evidence that the campaign has already begun. One small UK news site removed two images from the cache last night after The Times contacted the publisher. A linked site in Brussels, which records 20,000 unique visitors per month, is still displaying one of the memes.
The plan also envisaged Russian state media outlets picking up on the images and claiming that their appearance showed there to be public scepticism about the Oxford vaccine. Reports featuring some of the images appeared last month on the Vesti News programme in Moscow, described as the equivalent of BBC Two’s Newsnight.
The messaging in the campaign echoes statements from high-level Kremlin officials describing a “monkey vaccine” and contrasting it with the Russian vaccine derived from a human adenovirus.
Britain has warned that the Oxford labs have been hit by cyberattacks from Russia and intelligence officials have been concerned that the dark arts of disinformation would also be applied.
General Sir Nick Carter, chief of the defence staff, accused Russia last month of engaging in “political warfare” over the vaccine and playing into the hands of conspiracy theorists.
Vaccine hesitancy is a problem. Research by King’s College London and Ipsos Mori in August found that one in six respondents to a survey said they would definitely not or would be unlikely to accept a vaccine. A poll published in the US yesterday found that only 70 per cent were willing to be vaccinated and about half wanted to wait until they were sure the shots were safe.
Disinformation analysts are reluctant to attribute the materials to the Russian state directly but they are aware of the use of “difficult to detect” social media messaging by Moscow.
Andrew Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group said the British project was being carefully monitored. He said the team would not be daunted by attempts to derail its work.
A spokesperson for the Russian embassy said: “The suggestion that the Russian state may conduct any kind of propaganda against the Astrazeneca vaccine is itself an example of disinformation. It is obviously aimed at discrediting Russia’s efforts in combating the pandemic, including the good co-operation we have established with the UK in this field.” Russian officials and media outlets have previously accused the West of trying to tarnish the reputation of its vaccine.
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