 | |
| Industry | News media |
|---|---|
| Founded | 18 July 2011 |
| Founder | Marat Musin |
| Headquarters | Moscow, Russia (Abkhazia until 2017) |
Number of employees | 50 (as of 2013 [update] ) [1] |
| Website | www |
ANNA News (Analytical Network News Agency) is a Russian pro-Kremlin [14] news agency. [15] The agency's name ANNA used to stand for "Abkhazian Network News Agency"; after the head office moved to Moscow, when registering in Roskomnadzor on 22 September 2017, [16] "Abkhazian" was changed to "Analytical".
ANNA News was officially registered as mass media in Abkhazia on 18 July 2011 after the events of the Abkhaz–Georgian conflict. [17] [18] It was founded and managed by Marat Musin until his death in May 2018. [19] Musin was a specialist in financial intelligence who worked at Moscow State University and at the Russian State University of Trade and Economics . [1]
The agency takes a pro-Kremlin position, [20] [21] and is part of a wider network of outlets that amplifies Russian propaganda. [21] ANNA publishes in the Russian language and is known for being "a voracious purveyor of insider YouTube footage of the Syrian civil war since 2012"; ANNA embedded with the Syrian Arab Army in their operations against rebels. [22] [23] It has been known for publishing footage recorded directly from Syrian Army tanks. [24] In January 2013, a Russian judge and a former military intelligence officer Sergey Berezhnoy survived being shot while accompanying ANNA crew in the Damascus suburb of Darayya, Syria. [25] [26] Berezhnoy said that he participated in the coverage of the military operation in Syria as a writer. [27] According to a 2018 publication from the Moscow Psychological and Social University, ANNA News works with officers of the information confrontation group of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria. [28]
ANNA journalists were also embedded with Russian-backed separatists fighting the Government of Ukraine since 2014. [29] [30]
In May 2020, ANNA News was banned from YouTube for violating its terms of service. [31] [13] [32] [33] [34] It was revealed that employees of ANNA also worked for Russian propaganda websites NewsFront and SouthFront, [35] [32] and that NewsFront had raised money for ANNA in 2014. [32] Both ANNA News and SouthFront support separatist forces in Ukraine. [36] [37] [38] In August 2021, president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, based on the decision of the National Security and Defence Council, signed a decree "on the application of personal special economic and other restrictive measures" against ANNA News. The decision ordered the web resources of the news agency to be blocked. [39] [40]
According to U.S. intelligence officer T. S. Allen, Pascal Andresen and the Ukrainian magazine Political Life, it is engaged in influence operations and is a propaganda tool. [41] [42] [43] According to The Moscow Times newspaper, it has a 'forceful pro-Assad slant.' [1] Professor of Arabic language and civilisation Stéphane Valter writes that the way the news agency diffuse their images "clearly indicates a bias in favour of the Syrian regime." [44]
In June 2014, ANNA News falsely claimed that political advisor Jen Psaki had been fired from the US State Department. [45] In the fall of 2014, the agency published a fake photo of several dead people who were allegedly killed by the Ukrainian authorities. [46]
On 5 January 2017, ANNA News falsely claimed that the jihadist organisation Al-Nusra Front, which fought against the Syrian authorities, calls the White Helmets volunteer organisation "soldiers of the revolution". [47]
In February 2017, ANNA News claimed that Ukraine was the source of a leak of radioactive iodine-131. The news agency did not provide any evidence. [48] [49] [50]
In late 2017, ANNA News journalist Oleg Blokhin based in Syria created staged photos to substantiate the existence of a fake private military company Turan. [2] [51] [52] After it was discovered that the photos were fake, ANNA removed all of Blokhin materials from its website. [53] Oleg Blokhin categorically rejected the claims of Russian research group Conflict Intelligence Team that the PMC Turan, fighting in Syria, is a fiction created by him. [54] He also mentioned that neither he nor ANNA News have ever released information about "Turan", since he doesn't comment on information of any Russian units in Syria at all. [55]
Material Evidence is an international exhibition first presented in Russia in 2013 by Vladislav Shurigin and Denis Tukmakov with direct financial support from Zhurnalistskaya Pravda, a Moscow-based newspaper, indirectly financed by Internet Research Agency. Both Shurigin and Tukmakov are authors of for far right magazine Zavtra, members of the National Bolshevik Party and nationalist Izborsk Club. The exhibition displays a strongly anti-Western and pro-Russian view on civil conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is advertised as an "evidence of USA aggression" and the section on Ukraine describes the events of surrounding Euromaidan as "upsurge of nationalists-banderovtsy groups" and War in Donbass as "opposition against banderovtsy and Western Oligarchs".
The Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war began in September 2015, after a request by Assad government for military aid against opposition militias and Islamic State (IS). The intervention was kick-started by extensive air strikes across Syria, focused on attacking opposition strongholds of Free Syrian militias of Revolutionary Command Council and Sunni militias under Army of Conquest coalition. In line with Ba'athist Syrian propaganda which denounces all armed resistance to its rule as "terrorism"; Syrian military chief Ali Abdullah Ayoub depicted Russian airstrikes as facilitating their campaign against terrorism. Russian special operations forces, military advisors and private military contractors like the Wagner Group were also sent to Syria to support the Assad regime, which was on the verge of collapse. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement had been heavily invested in providing Assad with diplomatic cover and propping up the Syrian Arab Armed Forces with billions of dollars of arms and equipment. In December 2017, the Russian government announced that its troops would be deployed to Syria permanently.
Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin is a Russian army general serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces. A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, Tajikistani Civil War, Second Chechen War, and the Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war, he was from October 2022 to January 2023 the commander of all Russian forces in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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"Crucified Boy" is a reference to a fake anti-Ukrainian atrocity propaganda story spread by Russian state-owned Channel One on July 12, 2014 as part of broader incitement of hatred toward Ukraine during the War in Donbas.
The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner, is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. The Wagner Group has used Russian Armed Forces infrastructure. While the group is not ideologically driven, elements of Wagner are linked to neo-Nazism and far-right extremism.
The Battle of Khasham, also known as the Battle of Conoco Fields, was a military engagement of the Syrian civil war fought on 7 February 2018 near the towns of Khasham and Al Tabiyeh in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria. The Operation Inherent Resolve coalition delivered air and artillery strikes on Syrian Armed Forces and pro-government militias after they reportedly engaged a U.S. military and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) position in the region.
Dmitry Valerievich Utkin is a Russian army officer. He served as a special forces officer in the GRU, where he held the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is alleged to have founded the Wagner Group, with his own call-sign reportedly being Wagner. Utkin has received four Orders of Courage of Russia.
Arkady Arkadyevich Babchenko is a Russian print and television journalist. From 1995, Babchenko served in the communication corps in the North Caucasus while participating in the First Chechen War. He later volunteered for six months during the Second Chechen War. After leaving the army in 2000 he worked as a war correspondent for more than a decade. Since 2017 he has worked as a presenter for the TV channel ATR. In 2006 he published the book One Soldier's War, about his experiences in Chechnya.
The Insider is an independent online newspaper specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analytics. It was founded in 2013 by Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian journalist and the owner of the newspaper. The newspaper is known for exposing fake news in Russian media. The editorial office of the website is located in Riga, Latvia. Andris Jansons is the editor-in-chief of the website.
Gennady Valeryevich Zhidko was a colonel general of the Russian Armed Forces. He was awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation in 2017 for his service as chief of staff of Russian forces deployed to Syria. Following this assignment, Zhidko commanded the Eastern Military District and headed the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces.
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The existence of at least one Russian PMC seems to have been completely fabricated, for unknown reasons. Ruslan Leviev of the Conflict Intelligence Team (a group that describes itself as conducting open-source, devil's advocate, big-data intelligence on Russia's wars in Ukraine and Syria), demonstrated through comparative photographic evidence that the group, "Turan," a supposed Muslim Russian PMC in Syria, was fake. A different "journalist," Oleg Blokhin of two pro-Russian-state news organizations (the Abkhazian Network News Agency, http://anna-news.info/about/, and Russian Spring, http://rusvesna.su/about), who "broke" the news about Turan, actually created an elaborate photo-shopped hoax, starring himself and a colleague in combat fatigues. Several Russian newspapers had written about Turan as if it were real (Bukkvoll and Østensen 2018).
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)Among the Russian accounts promoting the idea that Ms. Psaki had lost her job was that of ANNA, an obscure news agency based in Abkhazia ...
Soon after the publication of the CIT investigation, ANNA News began removing Oleg Blokhin's materials from its website. Meanwhile, Znak.com contacted Blokhin, and he called the investigation into the Turan PMC "fake and delusional." "Why, in principle, the appearance of Turan was associated with me, I do not know. The investigation is based only on some gossip and guesswork ... I would advise those people who are engaged in such investigations to carefully check the information and not speculate on assumptions. Because the output may turn out to be such a fake, nonsense, "he said.
... Расследование [CIT] основано только на каких-то сплетнях и догадках. Якобы я похож на человека в униформе с шевроном этой ЧВК. Ну и что? Потом там показан неизвестный человек возле БТРа, у которого замазано лицо. И по этому фото тоже делаются какие-то выводы, но не представлено никаких более-менее конкретных фактов. А то, что якобы проводимые операции „ЧВК Туран" проходили в тех местах Сирии, где был я… Ну что ж, я могу сказать только одно: я был в Сирии везде.
Ни от меня, ни от ANNA News никогда в жизни не выходила информация о «Туране». Я не комментирую вообще [информацию, которая] касается каких-либо российских подразделений в Сирии. Что касается фотографии с Калашниковым, непонятно, о чем она говорит и при чем здесь ЧВК «Туран» ...