The EU’s security commissioner Julian King said russia had paved the way for its decision to fire on and board two artillery ships and a tug boat through the dissemination of fake news, The Guardian reports.
The false claims, said to have been spread for “more than a year”, included that Ukraine had infected the sea with cholera and that its secret services had been trying to transport a nuclear bomb to occupied Crimea.
According to him, the European commission’s East StratCom unit, responsible for highlighting disinformation, had discovered a complicated web of untruths emanating from russian sources.
