Russia Spreads Vaccine Misinformation With Deadly Results

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Russian trolls are spreading misinformation in Africa through messaging apps in an attempt to promote Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine over those developed in the United States and other Western countries. The Russian propaganda narrative centers on false information about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The consequences are potentially deadly for people such as Joël Bokadi, a miner in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who received false information from a Nigerian number on WhatsApp in early December 2020. The message claimed that an American infectious disease expert had hidden research showing that COVID-19 vaccines damage people’s immune systems and is therefore part of a conspiracy to harm people, according to The Daily Beast.

Convinced of the false information he received from the Nigerian WhatsApp user, Bokadi forwarded the message to dozens of people.

Russia’s trolling began over the summer and increased as countries raced to develop and promote vaccines. Russian trolls commonly push false information about American vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, as well as the United Kingdom’s AstraZeneca vaccine, while trumpeting Russia’s vaccine.

The WhatsApp message Bokadi received and spread had been published the previous day by Opera News, a popular news and content app in Africa owned by China’s Golden Brick Capital private equity fund, according to The Daily Beast. Topping the article was the headline: “Why Africa Should Focus on Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine.”

About the time Bokadi received his message, the Council on Foreign Relations reported on work by Novetta, a company that collects and analyzes traditional and social media data across Africa. Novetta developed a Rumor Tracking Program to follow bad information about COVID-19 vaccines and other pandemic-related issues.

The Russian disinformation campaign started August 11, when the Russian Ministry of Health approved Sputnik V and touted it as the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, although it had not undergone the same clinical scrutiny that vaccines are subject to in most of the world.

Russia’s campaign to discredit Western vaccines also has targeted Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa. Novetta’s analysis showed that the Russian vaccine was the most discussed COVID-19 vaccine in African media, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin often is quoted heavily in stories touting Sputnik V.

“Moscow does this for its own interest,” Okon Nya, executive director of Tregong, a Nigerian media research agency that combats COVID-19 disinformation, told The Daily Beast. “Russia is not only looking to undermine the West but is seeking ways to convince Africa that it offers better medical science than other nations.”

Russian trolls are experienced in spreading misinformation about vaccines meant to stop disease outbreaks in Africa.

From 2018 to 2020, Russia’s Internet Research Agency, run by Putin’s close ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, helped spread misinformation about an Ebola vaccine during an outbreak in the DRC.

A study by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative showed that about 10,400 messages referencing or spreading false information about Ebola flooded WhatsApp messages in the DRC over two months in 2018.

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, which in October 2019 and most recently in December 2020, removed six networks of Russian accounts for engaging in foreign interference. The Russian troll account misinformation campaigns targeted the African countries of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, Libya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa and Sudan, and were linked to the Wagner Group and Internet Research Agency head Prigozhin.