[ad_1]
“Even before the COVID-19 crisis, we saw some coordination in the field of propaganda between Russia and China,” said Lea Gabrielle, special envoy of the Global Engagement Center of the US State Department, which oversees foreign propaganda. .
“In the wake of the pandemic, cooperation between the two countries has accelerated further … and they are trying to shape public opinion about the COVID-19 pandemic in pursuit of their own goals,” he told reporters.
According to Gabrielle, the number of new followers of Chinese diplomats on the Twitter network increased from 30 a day to more than 720 in March.
The center previously announced that thousands of Russia-linked accounts on social media had spread conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, including claims that it was created by the United States.
The United States has also been outraged earlier by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman on Twitter, posting that the coronavirus had been spread by the US military in Wuhan. In March, US and Chinese Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping spoke on the phone, and the two sides apparently agreed to refrain from making similar statements.
But tensions rose again after United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the virus may have originated from the Wuhan virology laboratory. This time, Beijing called those thoughts disinformation.
Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the best epidemiologists in the United States explain that there is no evidence that the virus has developed in the laboratory. Scientists say the virus originated from the Wuhan market, where exotic animal meat was sold.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed pandemic cooperation on Friday.
Putin says that “Russia opposes attempts to use the epidemic as a pretext to accuse China and strongly supports it.”
No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of ELTA.
[ad_2]
