Citing conversations with US officials, the Journal said that Russia is using online publications to wage the disinformation campaign, with a State Department official identifying four vehicles that “served as fronts” for the effort.
Although the newspaper noted that the number of readers for the vehicles is small, the sites “emphasized the risk of side effects from vaccines, questioned its effectiveness and said the United States has accelerated the approval process for the Pfizer vaccine, among other false or misleading claims. . ”
“We can say that these channels are directly linked to Russian intelligence services,” the State Department official told the Journal. “They are all foreign-owned, based outside the United States. They vary widely in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they are all part of Russian propaganda and the disinformation ecosystem.”
CNN contacted the State Department for comment.
A Kremlin spokesman denied the Journal that the country’s intelligence services were leading the disinformation campaign.
“It is absurd. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism of vaccines,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the newspaper.
The Journal said that in addition to the campaign being waged through the four media outlets, “Russian state media and Russian government Twitter accounts have made open efforts to raise concerns about the cost and safety of the Pfizer vaccine, which outside experts government officials say an effort to promote the sale of Russia’s rival vaccine, Sputnik V. ”
The social media accounts linked to the four vehicles, however, have been removed on most major platforms, the newspaper said.
“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine other than Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a potentially greater threat to the dominance of the Sputnik market,” says a report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy , according to the Daily.
Included in the disinformation campaign is News Front, a publication that used international reports to increase “the risk of a person receiving vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna Inc. of contracting Bell’s palsy, in which the facial muscles are paralyzed,” according to the Journal . , who noted that although a small number of side effects have been reported by recipients of the vaccine, the injections are extremely safe and effective.
Pfizer spokeswoman Pamela Eisele told the newspaper that so far, “millions of people have been vaccinated with our vaccine following the endorsement of regulators in several countries.”
A spokeswoman for Moderna did not immediately respond to the Journal’s request for comment.
Jennifer Hansler of CNN contributed to this report.