When Poland recently hosted NATO military exercises, disinformation operatives sprang to action in Bulgaria, especially fertile ground for Kremlin-friendly narratives.
The March 4-5 drills, part of NATO's Steadfast Defender 24 program, were quickly and sinisterly spun as the prelude to a NATO invasion of Russia. One partial headline falsely warned, "Dragon 24: NATO prepares for war with Russia, soldiers cross the Polish Vistula River...," before trailing off, an apparent click-bait tactic to lure in readers.
The website wasn't a lone voice but part of a cluster of so-called "mushroom sites," which are created in bulk and on the cheap -- often sprouting up around major news events -- with the aim of seeding disinformation and fake news. At least 25 Bulgarian websites -- many cast to appear as legitimate news websites -- published the fake news about the NATO exercises, according to a recent report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), a disinformation analytical unit of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. A local NGO recently put the number of such sites in Bulgaria at 400.
The DFRLab report shone a light on the types of websites used. Most were not primarily focused on "hard" news but rather sports, entertainment, and lifestyle topics, among others. After the websites spawn, the content spreads across social media, with DFRLab noting the use of a "cluster of Facebook assets."
The mushroom tactics have been used before. EU DisinfoLab, an NGO monitoring disinformation efforts in Europe, exposed a Russian-based influence operation that had been operating in Europe since at least May 2022, just months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Operation Doppelganger, the name given to this campaign, used multiple "clones" of authentic media (at least 17 media outlets, including Bild, The Guardian, and RBC Ukraine) and targeted users with fake articles, videos, and opinion polls. To achieve this, those responsible purchased numerous domain names that resembled real media brands and copied their designs.
Cashing In On Fake News
Spreading disinformation also appears to pay. In its report, DFRLab found that hundreds of domains spreading pro-Russian propaganda are utilizing digital advertising platforms.
"So, besides spreading pro-Russia propaganda and an agenda aligned with Kremlin interests, Bulgarian mushroom websites also monetize the spread of disinformation and utilize clickbait titles to prompt users to click the links," Sopo Gelava, author of the report, told RFE/RL in e-mailed remarks.
In 2023, the Center for the Study of Democracy, a Bulgarian public-policy institute, reported a link between sites spreading Russian disinformation and AdRain.bg, a digital advertising platform in Bulgaria.
In her latest research for DFRLab, Gelava "found that e-mails linked to the AdRain advertising platform registered at least 10 websites in the network between 2013 and 2018."
A co-owner of AdRain denied those claims. "AdRain is a platform for serving advertising. Similar to Google’s AdSense, AdNow [another online ad company], and hundreds of others. AdRain registration is free, and any site owner can register on the platform and use our ad-serving and ad-box-monitoring code," Miroslav Kastsarov told RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service.
"AdRain does not own or have ownership in the [10] sites listed. AdRain's business is limited to advertising management only. The sites in question use AdRain for ad management, [and] this is the only touch point," Kastsarov added.
Fertile Ground
With its mix of pro-Russian parties, lack of political will, and low media literacy, EU member Bulgaria is a prime target for Kremlin-driven propaganda, with the country traditionally scoring low in the EU's annual Media Literacy Index. And, according to a fall 2023 survey by Eurobarometer, which monitors public opinion across the EU, only 44 percent of Bulgarians polled doubted information from social media, compared to the EU average of 60 percent.
Disinformation spread during the COVID-19 pandemic, much of it by the pro-Russian Bulgarian Socialist Party and the far-right Revival party, was at least in part to blame for skyrocketing infection rates in the EU’s poorest state. Since 2022, disinformation efforts have focused on promoting Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader and justifying the Kremlin's war against Ukraine, a country that is presented as terminally corrupt and overrun by fascists.
For example, in 2023, Factcheck.bg reported that a network of mushroom websites disseminated Kremlin disinformation that claimed children of Ukrainian refugees in European Union countries were taken from their parents.
The year before, the Ukrainian fact-checking organization StopFake reported that Bulgarian websites spread fake news alleging that Ukraine had committed genocide against the people of eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
With some of that disinformation portraying NATO as an aggressor and sowing popular fears of war with Russia, Bulgaria’s defense minister recently complained that it was impacting the army's readiness, with fewer Bulgarians applying to the country's military academies.
"Party members, civil servants, and journalists in traditional media are also involved in spreading pro-Russian disinformation," said Ralitsa Kovacheva, editor in chief of Bulgaria’s Factcheck.bg.
Despite the scale of the problem, Sofia has done little to counter disinformation campaigns, Kovacheva adds.
Bulgaria again finds itself stuck in political turmoil, with a peculiar power-sharing deal reached after elections in April 2023 proving difficult to abide by. With efforts to forge a new government foundering, another snap parliamentary poll -- the sixth such election in three years -- will take place on June 9, the same day Bulgarians go to the polls in European Parliament elections.
"We are facing another preliminary election, so I don't expect any positive developments in the institutional fight against disinformation any time soon," Kovacheva said.
