Anneli Ahonen, Head of the European Union External Action Service's East StratCom Taskforce, touched upon the situation on the COVID-19 disinformation in the Eastern Partnership countries, and particularly, in Russia.

“We have collected over 400 examples of disinformation messages originating in pro-kremlin sources about coronavirus in different languages, targeting both Russian domestic audiences, international audiences, Eastern partnership countries audiences. And we can see three different strands of messages,” she said.

According to her, “one claims about the origin of the virus, that it would be man-made, created in secret Western military laboratories.”

“The second category is the messages targeting you solidarity and unity, claims that only Russia and China have responded effectively,” she noted adding that the last part is the claims about fakers, misleading health advice and conspiracy theories. "Like that frequent hand-washing does not really protect you from coronavirus," she added.

“And we have also seen how pro-kremlin disinformation and Chinese attempts to spread disinformation have coincided in their interest and support each other as messages. For example, claiming that the virus originates in the US,” Anneli Ahonen noted.