How foreign powers are gaslighting Americans; The Washington Post, October 6, 2025

  L. Gordon Crovitz, The Washington Post; How foreign powers are gaslighting Americans

"L. Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is co-CEO of NewsGuard, which assesses the reliability of news sources and claims spreading online.

The United States has unilaterally disarmed in the information wars. The Trump administration has ended key efforts to defend against Russian, Chinese and Iranian targeting of Americans with false claims.

This disarmament includes largely dismantling the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which was the leading U.S. intelligence operation charged with “mitigating threats to democracy and U.S. national interests,” including efforts by adversaries to influence popular opinion. The U.S. also recently canceled a cooperation agreement with European allies to identify and expose disinformation operations targeting Americans and their allies. The Trump administration defends its abdication by claiming it is countering censorship, but warning of false claims by hostile governments provides Americans with more information, not less."

The dark reality behind the Chinese president’s hot mic moment about transplanted organs; Chicago Tribune via The Mercury, September 24, 2025

Cory Franklin, Chicago Tribune via The Mercury ; The dark reality behind the Chinese president’s hot mic moment about transplanted organs

"During a recent military parade in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin was caught on a hot mic saying to Xi Jinping, his Communist Chinese counterpart, “Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and (you can) even achieve immortality.” Xi responded: “Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.”

Currently, there is no credible medical basis to suggest that continual organ transplantation can reverse the aging process, but when the two most important totalitarian leaders in the world consider this prospect, we should listen because there may be more going on than meets the ear. The overtones are ominous, and the conversation takes on added significance in the wake of a report by the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph that the Communist Chinese Party, or CCP, is opening six medical facilities for organ transplantation in the Xinjiang autonomous region by 2030.

Xinjiang is set to become the organ transplant destination center for privileged CCP members, wealthy Chinese nationals and well-heeled international clients. Transplant teams of surgeons, anesthesiologists and related medical personnel are being recruited to serve the elite clientele, who will pay exorbitant sums to receive an organ — money added to the coffers of the CCP.

Xinjiang is a large remote area in western China, far from the metropolitan hubs of the East. Why was it selected as the organ transplant center? Likely because of a basic principle of organ transplantation: It is far more efficient to bring organ recipients to where the donor organs are rather than transport organs long distances and risk they will not be serviceable. (This is especially true of perishable key organs such as the lungs, liver and heart.) And Xinjiang is home to large numbers of Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority, who are apparently a convenient source of readily available organs."

‘Children thrive down here’: the secret play centre hidden under Ukraine’s most dangerous city; The Guardian, September 24, 2025

Liz Cookman , The Guardian; ‘Children thrive down here’: the secret play centre hidden under Ukraine’s most dangerous city

"In an underground shelter in Kherson, probably the most dangerous city in Ukraine, children are chasing each other between plastic chairs. Outside,mortars, artillery and drones fly their deadly paths back and forth across the Dnipro River that separates the city from Russian forces.

This makeshift underground play centre is one of the few places where children can socialise with each other in safety. For a few hours, it can be as though the war is not happening. When the explosions get too close, teachers working at the centre clap louder or turn up the music to drown out the noise.

As children returned to school across Ukraine this month, one in three are having their fourth consecutive academic year disrupted. In frontline areas such as Kherson, where schools have been damaged in attacks, children have to study largely online...

Across Ukraine as a whole, more than 3,000 children have been killed or injured since the start of full-scale war in 2022 – equivalent to about 150 classrooms of children.

With such dangers, families are forced to spend much of their lives underground or indoors, calculating every errand against mortal danger. Stuck indoors, teachers say children now struggle to socialise, and their speech and confidence have been set back without access to their peers, while some have not yet learned to read.

Narmina Strishenets, a conflict adviser with the UK charity Save the Children, says: “Instead of focusing on play, socialising and passions, children are focused on physical survival.

“Many are now one or two years behind in core subjects,” says Strishenets. “Childhood is under attack and they are losing hope.” 

The underground play centre, at a secret location in a residential area of Kherson, is one of the few spaces where children get personal support from teachers and psychologists. It was set up last year by the chair of a local housing association, Oleh Turchynskyi."

How Russia is grooming Ukraine’s children to fight for it: ‘I understood it wasn’t just play’; The Guardian, September 10, 2025

Liz Cookman, The Guardian; How Russia is grooming Ukraine’s children to fight for it: ‘I understood it wasn’t just play’

"Sonya spent a month at the Avangard camp, which has several other branches across Russia, and had sanctions imposed on it by the UK in November for its role in the forced deportation and brainwashing of Ukrainian children. She says she and other children faced a programme of activities that included being taught to dig trenches and rig them with booby traps and trip wires, load machine guns, take part in military-style formations and carry other children on their backs to simulate medical evacuations.

Similar to Soviet-era youth camps, these centres have escalated in number since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Critics say they are used to indoctrinate children to prepare them for future service in the Russian military.

Now large numbers of children from occupied regions of Ukraine are reportedly being sent alongside the young Russians. The Kremlin portrays these facilities as physical and cultural learning opportunities for children."

Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids; The Daily Beast, August 29, 2025

Anna Nemtsova, The Daily Beast ; Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids

"Children as young as 7 are now being forced to join Vladimir Putin’s dystopian drone war, which rained down attacks on Kyiv on Thursday that left 23 people dead, including four kids.

The 7-year-olds are not directly involved in the war in Ukraine, but in a chilling escalation, they will be trained as future drone pilots as part of their education in school from next year. And then, starting in ninth grade, children are being actively recruited to work in a drone factory that is part of a college where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are sent to kill civilians in Ukraine are being manufactured.

Conditions are brutal in the drone factory at Alabuga college, 600 miles west of Moscow, with allegations of bullying and physical abuse. One of the young workers, who asked to be called Kate, told the Daily Beast that she was being reprogrammed into an “unbreakable” part of Putin’s war machine...

Putin said drone piloting had to become a part of the school program to teach children “to pilot, assemble and construct drones.”

“I am convinced that it will make the kids busy with something useful and interesting, distract them from things they should not be doing,” he explained."

The Guardian view on the Alaska summit: there must be no more gifts to Vladimir Putin, Editorial; The Guardian, August 17, 2025

Editorial; The Guardian view on the Alaska summit: there must be no more gifts to Vladimir Putin

"Ukraine must remain in control of the future of its own territory, and the use of force must not be rewarded by the summary redrawing of borders. With enormous bravery and skill, and at immense cost, Ukraine has resisted an illegal invasion for more than three years. There must be no sellout."

Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine; BBC, August 17, 2025

Joel Gunter, BBC ; Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine

"For Ukrainians, polling shows security guarantees are an absolutely vital part of any potential agreement on territory or anything else.

"People in Ukraine will accept various forms of security guarantees," said Anton Grushchetsky, the director of Kyiv's International Institute for Sociology, "but they require them."

For Yevhen Tkachov, the emergency worker in Kramatorsk, exchange of territory could only be considered with "real guarantees, not just written promises".

"Only then, more or less, I am in favour of giving Donbas to Russia," he said. "If the British Royal Navy is stationed in the port of Odesa, then I agree."

As various paths to peace are floated and discussed, sometimes in the deal-making style preferred by President Trump, there is a risk of losing sight of the real people involved – people who have already lived through a decade of war and who may stand to lose even more now in exchange for peace.

Donbas was a place full of Ukrainians from all different walks of life, said Vitalii Dribnytsia, a Ukrainian historian. "We are not just talking about culture, about politics, about demographics, we are talking about people," he said.

Donetsk might not have the cultural reputation of somewhere like Odesa, Mr Drinytsia said. But it was Ukraine. "And any corner of Ukraine, regardless of whether it has some great cultural significance or not, is Ukraine," he said."

Ukrainian mood hardens as MPs insist country should not be forced to surrender; The Guardian, August 17, 2025

Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv and Artem Mazhulin , The Guardian; Ukrainian mood hardens as MPs insist country should not be forced to surrender

[Kip Currier: For anyone who thinks Ukraine should just capitulate to Putin and Trump's pressure to give up its sovereign territory and its peoples, realize what that means: 

all. Ukrainians. in. those. territories. will. now. be. living. under. Russian. totalitarian. rule. 

Period. Full stop.

Ask yourself, too, if you're an American, if you'd be willing to just acquiesce to pressure and surrender a half dozen U.S. states to an authoritarian invader.

Moreover, giving up those states to Russia is no guarantee that Russia won't later use those newly acquired regions as footholds to again attack Ukraine and try to take over the entire country. As an 8/17/25 BBC article reports:

Zelensky has consistently said Ukraine would not hand over the Donbas in exchange for peace. And confidence in Russia to abide by any such arrangement – rather than simply use the annexed land for future attacks – is low.  

For that and other reasons, about 75% of Ukrainians object to any formal cessation of land to Russia, according to polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv1pdkll8o

 

That's what a despotic abductor of Ukrainian children, a bomber of hospitals, and indicted war criminal like Putin is likely to do.

And for anyone who is a marginalized person in those territories, such as LGBTQ+ persons, your very life may be at risk if Russia takes control of those lands. (See here and here and here.]

[Excerpt]

"A string of Ukrainian politicians and public figures condemned the idea of handing over unoccupied land to Russia for peace on Sunday, arguing that their country had not been defeated and should not be forced into a surrender.

The hardening of the mood came at the end of a weekend where there was first ridicule and disgust in Ukraine at the red-carpet treatment of Vladimir Putin by Donald Trump at their summit in Alaska, followed by frustration as it appeared that Trump was siding with the Russian leader.

Trump reportedly told European leaders that he believed a peace deal could be negotiated if Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to give up the areas of the Donbas region that the Russian invaders have not been able to seize in more than three years of fighting.

Halyna Yanchenko, an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament, said the suggestion that Ukraine should “simply surrender new territories without a fight – just because Putin wants it – is absurd from the very start”.

The MP, an anti-corruption activist previously part of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, said hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would be affected by Putin’s proposal, initially favoured by Trump after Friday’s Alaska summit.

Official estimates are that 255,000 people still live in the 3,500 square miles (9,000 sq km) of Donetsk province that Russia has been unable to seize in its three-and-a-half-year invasion, which includes the industrial cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Donbas also comprises Luhansk province, which is almost totally occupied by Russia.

Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion the population of Donetsk was 1.9 million, so the number of people with property and other connections to the area wanted by Russia is higher. “So when someone brings up the idea of ‘trading territory’, we must understand that in practice it is trading people,” Yanchenko said...

Cartoons and memes circulated widely online over the weekend with a particular focus on the sight of US soldiers kneeling to straighten out the red carpet in Alaska for the Russian president.

“Dishonored,” wrote Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian drone fundraiser, on X, comparing the image to soldiers raising the US flag at Iwo Jima towards the end of the second world war.

Maksym Palenko, a cartoonist, drew a picture of a glum-looking Trump with his trademark red tie spooling out beneath him and turning into a carpet on which a laughing Putin was standing. It reflected shots of Putin smiling as he was sitting in Trump’s limousine while it was setting off.

“We do not deserve to surrender and we are not in a position to surrender,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP with the opposition European Solidarity party. “This part of Donetsk is a fortress and Putin has tried and failed to take it for 11 years. Now he wants to take it through diplomatic tricks and manoeuvres.”"

Trump’s Shameful “Summit” Was Even Worse Than We Thought; The Bulwark, August 16, 2025

 TIM MILLER , The Bulwark; Trump’s Shameful “Summit” Was Even Worse Than We Thought

"Tim Miller takes on how the Trump-Putin Alaska summit went from what seemed to be an empty nothing-burger to a grotesque betrayal as it’s now being reported Trump pushed Putin’s demands onto Zelenskyy that Ukraine give up Donetsk and Luhansk."

Why Trump’s Latest Reality TV Show Is a Flop; The Daily Beast, August 16, 2025

 David Rothkopf, The Daily Beast; Why Trump’s Latest Reality TV Show Is a Flop

"It is important to note that while Trump threatened to get tough on Russia if it did not go along with peace plans, what Trump really did was the opposite. He gave Putin a huge win by inviting him to the U.S. He literally rolled out the red carpet for a mass murderer, ending Putin’s well-deserved isolation from the U.S. and the international community. Trump spoke not of penalties for Russia but of future economic deals the two nations could celebrate. In other words, once again, Trump got fully played by Putin.

That is because Putin has realized all along that Trump was just a reality TV star playing at being president. The Russian thereby understands how to give Trump what he wants and therefore how to get what he seeks from Trump. He granted Trump just enough of a victory for the cameras while also sending an unmistakable message to those who really understand the game that is being played that Trump is weak, a stooge, a transitory character Putin will use and ultimately move on from.

There was a pathos to the whole event because if you watched closely, particularly during the closing press conference, it appeared Trump understood this as well. He was low-energy. He seemed defeated. He was going through the motions."

The cruel human cost of the ‘land swap’ idea for Ukraine; The Washington Post, August 14, 2025

Anna Husarska, The Washington Post; The cruel human cost of the ‘land swap’ idea for Ukraine

[Kip Currier: The callous nonchalance and indifference with which Trump speaks of the suffering that Ukraine has endured -- and continues to face -- at the hands of Putin is both galling and appalling. Note, too, that this is the same person who reportedly called Sweden's finance minister recently in pursuit of a Nobel Prize for Peace: transactionalism and grandiosity are at Trump's very core.]

[Excerpt]

"On Monday, President Donald Trump elaborated on what kind of deal might emerge from his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage this week. “There’ll be some land swapping going on. To the good, for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff.

“Also, some bad stuff for both,” Trump conceded.

Let us imagine a different kind of swap. Suppose Cuba invaded the United States, occupied most of Florida (justifying it with the claim that there are many Cubans living there) and three-quarters of Texas — and then agreed to withdraw from Texas if the United States gave it the whole of Florida. Would this qualify as a swap? And would it be “to the good” of the United States?

It is unjust to reward territorial aggression with territorial concessions. And such concessions would certainly set evil precedents in an increasingly chaotic world. But while these big questions are important, we must also not lose sight of the human costs such a “swap” would put on the Ukrainian people. Immediately ceding whatever territory Ukraine still holds in Donetsk region, as Russia is reportedly demanding, would be disastrous for the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians still trying to live in a war zone."

Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing System; The New York Times, August 12, 2025

Adam Goldman Glenn Thrush and Mattathias Schwartz , The New York Times; Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing System

"Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least in part responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records that might contain information that could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach.

It is not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion or if other countries were also involved, which some of the people familiar with the matter described as a yearslong effort to infiltrate the system. Some of the searches included midlevel criminal cases in the New York City area and several other jurisdictions, with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames.

The disclosure comes as President Trump is expected to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in Alaska on Friday, where Mr. Trump is planning to discuss his push to end the war in Ukraine."

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds; The New York Times, August 4, 2025

 Carl Zimmer, The New York Times; Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds

"Even as paper mills have worked to keep their efforts hidden, Dr. Abalkina has traced the output of companies in Russia, Iran and other countries, and found thousands of their papers in print. “You learn to see the patterns,” she said.

Dr. Amaral and his colleagues have now analyzed those patterns, using network theory and other statistical techniques. “We tried to give a picture of what’s below the surface,” said Reese Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and an author of the new study.

For their analysis, the scientists built a database of more than a million scientific papers. They searched for the papers in online forums where sleuths share duplicated images and tortured phrases, as well as the Retraction Watch Database, maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity.

The researchers compiled a list of 30,000 papers that have either been retracted or show signs of having come from a paper mill. They discovered connections between the papers that strongly hinted that they were the product of large-scale fraud. Many of these connections linked clusters of editors and authors who often worked together.

“There are huge networks that are very densely connected, where they’re all sending their papers to one another,” Dr. Richardson said. “If that’s not collusion, I don’t know what is.”"

Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool; The Guardian, April 25, 2025

 Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian; Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool

"Whether Trump succeeds in making Kyiv buckle or not, the new reality is clear. The US president is taking an axe to an international order constructed in the aftermath of a bloody world war, a system that has held, however imperfectly, since 1945. A central tenet of that order was that big states could not simply swallow up smaller ones, that unprovoked aggression and conquest would no longer be allowed to stand. Yet here is Trump bent on rewarding just such an act of conquest, not simply acquiescing in Putin’s land grab in Ukraine but conferring on it the legitimacy of approval by the world’s most powerful nation.

Note how he speaks as if Putin had every right to seize the territory of his neighbour. Asked this week what concessions, if any, he had extracted from Moscow, Trump replied that Putin’s willingness to stop the war, rather than gobbling up Ukraine in its entirety, was a “pretty big concession”.

This is not only a disaster for Ukraine, though it is obviously that. It is also the destruction of global architecture that has stood for many decades – and it is hardly a lone case. Trump’s tariff fetish is similarly upending a system of international trade that had made the world, and especially the US, more prosperous. The consequences are already visible, in plunging global stock markets, gloomy growth forecasts and warnings of a recession that will start in the US and then spread everywhere else.

Trump’s eagerness to acquiesce in Putin’s seizure of Ukraine makes a dead letter of international law, with its prohibition of the crime of aggression, and that too points to a wider pattern. For Trump is at war with the law at home as well as abroad. Indeed, in three short months, it has become an open question whether the rule of law still operates in the US...

There is no mystery to Trump. It’s all plain to see – the habits of the vandal, the autocrat, the gangster and the fool – with Ukraine as clear a guide as any. Not that that is any comfort to the people of that besieged land. They don’t want to be a cautionary tale, a demonstration case of the fecklessness and menace of Donald Trump. They want to be a free, independent nation. Their great misfortune is that the mighty country that should be their most powerful friend is now in the hands of an enemy."

Mr. President: Putin is THE dictator and 10 Ukraine-Russia war truths we ignore at our peril; New York Post, February 20, 2025

Douglas Murray, New York Post; Mr. President: Putin is THE dictator and 10 Ukraine-Russia war truths we ignore at our peril

"In Trump’s rush to end the bloodshed, these are also the truths against which any deal will be judged and which will define him when the history books are written.

To ignore them or not treat them with the gravity they deserve will also have enormous consequences for decades to come:

Truth No. 5

Putin is a dictator. Putin has ruled Russia with an iron KGB fist since coming to power in 1999. He has ruthlessly quashed independent media, ended free and fair elections, crushed civil society and killed his political opponents. And not just inside Russia, but around the world. People who live inside Russia and express any opposition to the war are imprisoned.

Truth No. 6

Zelensky is not a dictator. A political outsider, Zelensky won the 2019 presidential election, which was relatively free and fair. He has a 57% approval rating, not the 4% Trump claimed.

Unlike in Russia, Ukraine has vibrant independent media that hold the government to account — despite claims to the contrary by internet swamp creatures and Russian bots.

Many Ukrainians freely criticize the government’s conduct of the war. When Britain was fighting for its survival against the Nazis in the 1940s, it too did not hold elections.

The Russian ambassador to the UK spent yesterday crowing that he’s “not sure” Zelensky would be re-elected if there were elections today. But we all know one thing for sure. Whether or not Zelensky would be re-elected in Ukraine, Putin will always be re-elected in Russia. Because his elections are con jobs, pageant shows. Putin hasn’t won a free and fair election in his life. Because he doesn’t hold them."

Ukrainians Rally Around Zelensky as Trump and Putin Denigrate Him; Time, February 21, 2025

 HANNA ARHIROVA / AP, Time; Ukrainians Rally Around Zelensky as Trump and Putin Denigrate Him

"After Trump called Zelensky a “dictator”—for legally postponing an election last year—and as reports emerged of U.S. and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible ceasefire without input from Ukraine, even some of Zelensky’s harshest domestic critics have begun defending him.

“We may have different opinions about Zelensky, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos. “And to publicly criticize him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”

Trump’s harsh words for Zelensky have drawn criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans in the U.S. Congress, where defending Ukraine from Russia—with tens of billions of dollars in military aid—has had bipartisan support. But Vice President J.D. Vance admonished Zelensky for publicly warning Trump about falling for Russian disinformation...

A poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology put public trust in Zelensky at 57%. The survey was conducted Feb. 4 to Feb. 9 among 1,000 people living across Ukraine in regions and territories controlled by the Ukrainian government."

Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin; New York Post, February 20, 2025

 Ronny Reyes, New York Post; Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin’

"Fox News host Mark Levin, a longtime supporter of President Trump, is breaking with the commander-in-chief over his recent attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warning Trump that “MAGA doesn’t support Putin.”

Speaking on the Mark Levin Show on Wednesday, Levin offered a rare criticism of the president as he backed Zelensky for maintaining order in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Levin’s segment appeared to be a direct response to Trump’s claims that Zelensky is a dictator that the Ukrainian leader is stopping free elections and only has a very low approval rating. 

The Fox News host said both of those assertions are false."

Russia’s War on Ukraine: Three Years, Three Hundred and Two False Claims; NewsGuard's Reality Check, February 21, 2025

Eva Maitland and Madeline Roache, NEWSGUARD, NewsGuard's Reality Check; Russia’s War on Ukraine: Three Years, Three Hundred and Two False Claims

"As the war in Ukraine approaches the three-year anniversary of the Russian invasion that launched the conflict, NewsGuard has now identified and debunked 302 false claims relating to the war, nearly all of them originating as Russian propaganda.

These 302 claims appear in NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints proprietary database of viral false narratives that NewsGuard analysts have identified and debunked. NewsGuard analysts have identified 551 websites spreading these false claims...

AI IN ACTION: HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SUPERCHARGES PRO-KREMLIN PROPAGANDA

In 2022, NewsGuard debunked just one AI-generated falsehood emanating from Russia. In the second year of the war, NewsGuard debunked five AI-generated false claims, and there were 16 in the third. Indeed, as AI tools became more readily available, the easy access to AI image, audio, video and text generators has enabled Russia and its allies to reach more people, in more languages, with more convincing false claims...

HOME-GROWN, FOREIGN-TRAINED: THE AMERICAN PROPAGANDIST BEHIND 14 FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT ZELENSKY

The driving force behind these false corruption claims that have amassed so many millions of views appears to be John Mark Dougan, a Florida deputy sheriff turned Kremlin propagandist. Dougan is part of a Russian influence operation dubbed by Microsoft as Storm-1516. It appears to be an offshoot of the Internet Research Agency, a disbanded Russian troll farm.

NewsGuard has debunked 37 false narratives linked to Dougan and Storm-1516 targeting Ukraine, the U.S. 2024 election, the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the German 2025 election."

Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests; The Observer via The Guardian, February 15, 2025

Siân Boyle, The Observer via The Guardian; Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests

"Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist party, to facilitate censorship requests, an Observer investigation can reveal.

The technology company has engaged with the administrations of about 150 countries since 2011 that want information scrubbed from their public domains.

As well as democratic governments, it has interacted with dictatorships, sanctioned regimes and governments accused of human rights abuses, including the police in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians."