His department British BBC network which is engaged in the fight against disinformation (BBC Monitoring) discovered a company that declared its headquarters in Britanniawhich broadcasts Russian state disinformation to an audience of millions in the Arab world.

Yala News assures that the news it broadcasts is objective and unbiased, but analysis by the BBC shows that its content is a copy of news from websites linked to Russian state and this company operates in Syria.

Company Yala Groupits parent company Yala News, has a strong social media presence. V facebook has approximately 20 pagesEverything is bright and professional. Every two hours, they present captivating videos on topics that their three million Arabic-speaking subscribers might be interested in: celebrity interviews, comedy skits, some world politics.

Reviews on the pages of Yala News speak of impartiality and independence. But if you look closely, you can easily see that the articles on the company’s pages are clearly pro-Russian. And many of them are almost identical to those in the Russian state press, published on the same day, reports the BBC.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yala News posts became popular.

For example, on March 10, 2022 a completely false story appeared on Russian state television that the US allegedly intended to use birds as a biological weapon and through them to spread diseases to Russia. On the same day, the work was translated and published by the Arabic services of Russian publications. Sputnik and RT. Two hours later, it appeared as a video on the Yala News Facebook page.

This is just one of many examples. BBC journalists, along with experts on disinformation, tracked the most popular Yala News videos for a year and found that almost all of them were taken from “from” sites controlled by the Kremlin, or from sites that support the Kremlin.

These include, for example, “fake news” about massacres of its inhabitants. boot it was staged that the Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky he was drunk during a video message to the nation and that Ukrainian soldiers were deserting from the front. All this was reproduced on the Yala News page a few hours after they appeared in Russian state publications.

OUR Belen Carrasco Rodriguez from the UK Center for Information Sustainability, which studies Russian intelligence operations, considers Yala News the Kremlin’s mouthpiece in the Middle East.

The content of the posts and the time of their appearance suggest that Yala News is one of Moscow’s “information laundromats”: it publishes second- or third-hand propaganda to create the illusion that it does not come from the Kremlin. Russia has been doing this for a long time.

“Yala is popular with the Arab public, and Kremlin-connected sources can use that to their advantage,” says Rodriguez.

OUR Rory Thornton cyber security companies International Defense Group says the phenomenon, “information laundering,” has been gaining momentum lately in response to more and more people becoming aware of what Russian state-run media is all about.

“The idea here is to blur the narratives by changing them a bit and thus integrating them into the mainstream. For example, by hiring a digital marketing company to create content for their website, they give the impression that the information is completely unrelated to Russia and can be easily pushed into the real world,” says Thornton.

Yala Group is registered in the UK, in central London, at an address shared by over 65,000 other companies. 12,000 of them are active. The Yala Group has neither an office nor employees there.

We suspect, – writes the BBC, – that the Yala base is located in Syria, under the protection of a long-time ally of Moscow, Bashar al-Assad.

Our knowledge of Syria and methods geolocation revealed that the Facebook photos of Yala employees and office were taken in a suburb of Damascus. In fact, the profiles of most employees indicate that they are based in Damascus, and one of the former employees confirmed this.

Yala’s clients include well-known Syrian figures and well-known journalists who support the Assad regime. Another Yala client pro-Assad radio station Sham FM; It broadcasts Sputnik programs in Arabic.

Experts speculate that Yala was registered in the UK so as not to look like a company from their home country. be sanctioned. This allows him to establish relationships with companies such as Meta, which owns Facebook (its activities are recognized as extremist and banned in Russia).

The editors of one of the Yala Group’s Facebook pages recently wrote that the company has become Meta’s official social media marketing business partner.

She herself MetaHowever, it refused to accept the Yala Group as a “business partner,” the company’s press service said in response to a BBC inquiry.

Who is behind Yala News?

We found, – writes the BBC investigation team, – the director of Yal, Mr. Ahmad Mohamn. He is a Syrian businessman based in Dubai.

“Yala Group is a British company,” he told the BBC. – We have over 500 clients, including public figures, artists and emerging talents. We do not have employees in London yet, but they may appear in the near future.”

When asked about the pro-Kremlin videos on the Yala News page, Mohamn replied: “The content of Yala News is not biased. Syria, Russia or any other country, we are impartial.”

Asked if his company received money from the Russian or Syrian authorities, he replied: “I am the sole source of funding and the founder of Yala, and no one can influence me.”

The BBC has requested information about Yala’s registration with the UK’s national business register. House of companies. The press service replied that they do not comment on specific businesses and do not have the authority to verify the information provided during registration.

A Meta spokesperson recalled that the company is fighting misinformation on its platforms by hiring independent fact checkers who check the accuracy of information.

The BBC has reached out to Russian and Syrian authorities for comment on their relationship with Yala News, but has received no response.

Source: BBC (Russian service)