CSD, together with several other organizations, including the AEJ, organized a press conference to talk about the Kremlin’s pro-Russian disinformation and anti-democratic messages in Bulgaria in the context of the information war. According to T. Galev from CSD, when disinformation or propaganda is spread on purpose, we can classify the situation as an information war. This war began long before the events surrounding Russia and Ukraine and it dates back to 2014, when numerous studies noted a sharp increase in the amount of disinformation articles that originated from Russian sources. He also added that a key reason for disinformation to spread easily in Bulgaria is that the population is the most susceptible one to conspiracy theories in Europe.
One of the media outlets generating fake information in Bulgaria is Russia’s News Front. Thanks to sanctions by the European Union, the distribution of articles from this media outlet was blocked on Facebook, however, there are several other pro-Russian media outlets that are Bulgarian and their articles are actively shared on Facebook, such as onovini.eu, pogled.info, bradva.bg. He pointed to the far-right ultra-nationalist Revival as one of the main political parties disseminating disinformation, saying that they combine very cleverly nationalist and disinformation narratives that are always pro-Russian.