TIMES INVESTIGATION Coronavirus: fake news factories churning out lies over ‘monkey’ vaccine
A campaign targeting Oxford research may be linked to Russian officials
Manveen Rana, Sean O’Neill
Friday October 16 2020, 12.01am, The Times
thetimes.co.uk
The campaign echoes claims by a powerful figure in Moscow that the Oxford jab, to be made by Astrazeneca, is a “monkey vaccine” because of the way it is manufactured
The messages are deliberately unsophisticated, laced with attempts at dark humour and calculated to spread fear, uncertainty and scepticism.
A picture of Boris Johnson walking in Downing Street has been manipulated to make him look like a yeti. The caption reads: “I like my bigfoot vaccine.”
There is a chimpanzee in an Astrazeneca lab coat brandishing a syringe, while a top-hatted Uncle Sam urges: “I want you — to take the monkey vaccine.”
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Details of the campaign came from a confidential source who was involved in the project. Worried it would undermine the global effort to defeat the virus, they disclosed some of the campaign materials to The Times.
The evidence shows how the architects of the campaign intended to “seed” the images on social media in a dozen countries including India, Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Mexico, Malaysia, Vietnam and Peru.
A picture of Boris Johnson in Downing Street has been manipulated to make him look like a yeti
Many of those countries are vital markets for Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, which Kremlin agencies are pushing hard. Several have agreed to test the Russian product and Egypt recently signed a deal for 25 million doses.
Another key aim was to place the images and articles on websites in the West alongside articles raising questions about confidence in the vaccine.
The Times has found that this process has already begun. Images from the propaganda cache have recently appeared on three linked websites — EU Reporter, London Globe and New York Globe — alongside articles raising concerns about public confidence in Covid vaccines. They are all small news websites privately owned by a small British company which is owned by a former TV journalist. The images were accompanied by identical captions stating: “Memes like the above image have started to pop up on social media reflecting public anxiety about vaccines.”
London Globe removed the material yesterday after being contacted by The Times. One image remained on the EU Reporter site which, according to the data analytics firm Semrush, attracts 20,000 unique visitors per month.
It is understood that the images and accompanying text were offered to the website publisher as a package and it was not paid to publish them.
The source formerly involved in the disinformation scheme said it was intended that the appearance of the images on social media and blog sites would trigger a second phase in which Russian media outlets reported the spread of “monkey vaccine” memes. That has begun to happen with a report on Vesti News, produced by a state broadcaster, where a presenter stood in front of a screen with two of the “monkey vaccine” images on display. The sequence last month showed four images from the propaganda collection.
The genesis of the disinformation campaign appears to have been the incident just over a month ago when a volunteer in the Oxford vaccine trials fell ill and the process had to be temporarily halted. The delay was reported on RT, the state-owned television network formerly known as Russia Today. The piece claimed Astrazeneca’s use of a “monkey” adenovirus was “an untested method of vaccine development”. Astrazeneca, the drugs giant, has agreed to make millions of doses of the Oxford jab. RT said: “Russia’s Sputnik V, the world’s first registered vaccine, uses human adenoviruses as a vector — an extensively studied approach”.
The allegations about safety of the UK product came from Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is financing Russia’s vaccine development. Mr Dmitriev, a powerful figure in Moscow, has repeatedly referred to the Oxford product as a “monkey vaccine” in interviews and articles.
The assault on the British vaccine may have been conducted by those seeking approval in Moscow
There is no suggestion Mr Dmitriev was involved in organising the disinformation campaign. He is not one of the state officials identified in the evidence seen by The Times. However, the messages in the campaign have been crafted to echo his “monkey virus” theme.
The Sputnik V vaccine is being developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute, part of the Russian health ministry, with the heavy involvement of its defence ministry. The vaccine programme is being financed and marketed around the world by Mr Dmitriev’s state investment fund.
The Russian embassy denied any state involvement in a disinformation campaign. A spokesman said: “Astrazeneca is very well known and respected in the Russian Federation. Russia has agreed a contract on obtaining a certain amount of the Astrazeneca vaccine. Plans are also for the Astrazeneca vaccine to be partly produced in Russia itself, alongside with the Sputnik V, and some others. We stand for [a] variety of vaccines to be applied against this terrible disease. The Covid pandemic is a common threat, and both the Russian and the British governments are committed to combating it in a depoliticised manner.”
Jake Wallis, a disinformation analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the evidence obtained by The Times pointed to a co-ordinated, well-financed disinformation campaign. He said there appeared to be “significant motivation, significant effort and funding to plan the campaign, to target specific audiences, to target specific vulnerabilities”.
The campaign also has a built-in plan for denying Russian involvement at any level. The source told The Times that it was repeatedly stressed the campaign had to look as if it was the original work of young influencers and activists who might have their own reasons for scepticism about vaccines.
At the Oxford Vaccine Group there is dismay but no real surprise that they are being targeted. In March GCHQ installed extra cybersecurity measures around British centres involved in vaccine development and in July Britain, the US and Canada accused the Russian hacker group Cozy Bear of persistent efforts to hack vaccine secrets.
Andrew Pollard, of the vaccine project, said: “The end of this pandemic may well rely on having access to vaccines around the world. So undermining confidence in vaccines could mean that we continue with these physical distancing measures, lockdowns and the economic and health disruption of that for longer than we need to.”
Pascal Soriot, chief executive of Astrazeneca, said: “Scientists at Astrazeneca and at many other companies and institutions are working tirelessly to develop a vaccine and therapeutic treatments to defeat this virus. But it is independent experts and regulatory agencies across the world that ultimately decide if a vaccine is safe and effective before it is approved for use.”
The disinformation campaign against the Oxford vaccine is a small part of a long-running, undeclared quasi-war against the West.
Fake news, social media manipulation and the dissemination of conspiracy theories are key parts of this insurgency.
Russia’s strategy of using all means at its disposal has been attributed to General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, who wrote in 2013 that “the role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons”.
His thinking became known to intelligence officials, academics and journalists as the Gerasimov Doctrine. In truth, however, there is little new in this. President Putin’s Russia is continuing in the Soviet tradition of deploying spies, cultivating influence and spreading disinformation.
What has really changed in the past decade is Russia’s successful harnessing of the internet and global broadcasting.
Since 2015 the EUvsDisinfo project has been monitoring pro-Kremlin media and compiled an open and searchable database of 6,500 pieces of disinformation.
In recent months its analysts have seen a steady flow of propaganda for Russia’s own coronavirus vaccine which the Kremlin is hoping to market around the world.
Denigrating other vaccines, notably the one being tested by Oxford University and Astrazeneca, is a logical next step in that campaign.
The assault on the British vaccine may have been mounted with or without Kremlin approval. In practice, such operations are often conducted on a freelance basis by people seeking approval in Moscow.
Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute, likens Mr Putin’s Kremlin to a medieval court where “a bewildering array of political entrepreneurs” plot and feud like dukes and barons.
He wrote in FP magazine in 2018: “Some major operations are co-ordinated, largely through the presidential administration, but most are not.”
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