Are Legitimate Claims on Dubious Sites Evidence of Russian Disinformation?

Two, apparently British, news outlets were reportedly spreading Russian disinformation in Ukraine. The legitimacy of the sites is suspect while the story itself appears mostly authentic upon closer examination – the combination highlights the difficulties in identifying and deciphering Russian disinformation.

The Guardian said that one particular article from the two outlets – londoninsider.co.uk and talk-finance.co.uk – had been picked up and disseminated in Ukraine “where the UK’s media has a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness.”

The report concerned a Jan. 9 article titled “Weapons, Money and SARN: How the Czech-American Group Can Be Involved in Stealing From Ukraine” which was subsequently, picked up by multiple Ukrainian news sites who cited it as a British investigation despite the dubious nature of the site.

The article, which accused the US investment firm SARN of being “involved in arms trafficking, judicial fraud and embezzlement of funds allocated for [the] Ukrainian Armed Forces,” remains available on the London Insider site but has been supposedly taken down on Talk Finance.

SARN categorically denied the accusations in a press release on Jan. 24 and called it Russian disinformation.

However, London Insider published a follow-up article which doubled down on its claims after SARN supposedly sent a cease-and-desist order, although it’s unclear whether SARN followed up with legal action.

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The Guardian said it contacted both London Insider and Talk Finance for comment, after which an unnamed person from the contact listed on Talk Finance offered to meet in Calais’s “tent city,” where asylum seekers reside.

Another individual named as Thomas Henwell representing London Insider maintained the site’s neutrality when contacted and told The Guardian the site relies on advertising revenues. Henwell said SARN was simply attempting to intimidate the site.

However, he later reportedly refused to elaborate further on the site’s ownership and declined to speak on the phone or by Zoom. 

Kyiv Post established that though the nature of both sites appears questionable due to the lack of author bylines and their disputed content, the article itself, with some confirmed sources, appears mostly legitimate – albeit lacking and misguided in some of its conclusions.

And though the story bore hallmarks of Russian disinformation, in that it built a dubious narrative based on factual information, it’s unclear whether it was written with the intent to discredit Ukraine.

Dubious origins

It’s likely that neither site is truly UK-based as they claimed – or that its contributors are, at the very least, not British nationals.

Talk Finance listed one Charles Sizemore as the author of the article, a journalist who “vehemently denies any involvement in the creation or publication of the article” and said his name was misused, according to SARN’s press release.

Talk Finance’s site also contains a logo of that hardly suggests it belongs to a professional media organization.

The content, at times criticizing both Russian and Ukrainian public figures, also showed writing of uncertain quality and while demonstrating an in-depth understanding of affairs in both nations rarely seen in the British media.

In one such article dated June 7, an author with an English-sounding name, Matthew P., dived into the Russian connections to Pin-UP Ukraine, a casino service in Ukraine, citing investigations by a journalist Yevhen Plinsky, who published a video in Ukrainian on the same topic in October 2023.

Plinksy has a byline in Ukrainian news outlet TSN.

As for London Insider, the bulk of the articles were supposedly written by four journalists – Mary Davenport, David Shepardson, Robert Fowler and Tim Ashour.

Davenport supposedly wrote the article on SARN and was the subject of SARN’s cease-and-desist order. Her earliest article on the site is dated Sept. 21, 2022.

None of the authors has a byline on the site and no photos are listed on their profiles.

Ostensibly legitimate claims

The article in question concerns a Ukrainian arms procurement scandal that surfaced in late 2023, where Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said that defense officials and corporate leaders had stolen almost Hr.1.5 billion ($40 million) from the budget intended for the purchase of 100,000 mortar rounds.

As Radio Liberty reported in October 2023, Ukraine’s defense ministry contracted a local company called Lviv Arsenal to procure the mortar rounds who, in turn, contracted a Slovakia-based company called Sevotech for the procurement, which in turn contracted another company in Croatia - the money disappeared somewhere along the way.

London Insider’s report on the case corresponded to Ukrainian reports that preceded it and included names of Ukrainians allegedly involved in the scheme previously mentioned by an investigation by Censor.net, a Ukrainian news outlet

Among those identified as being involved was Vladyslav Klishchar, who later denied his involvement with Sevotech, the contracted Slovak company.

The alleged Czech connection

SARN’s alleged involvement, according to London Insider, concerns Czech attorney Petr Vališ, who supposedly worked for both SARN and the Ukrainians allegedly complicit in the scheme – though Kyiv Post found insufficient evidence to link the two parties through Vališ.

London Insider claimed that Vališ represented the Ukrainians through a company called ILS INVESTMENT GROUP s.r.o. Kyiv Post is unable to establish Vališ’s connection with the company, of which Klishchar was a board member. Vališ supposedly represented Klishchar in June 2023 when the latter claimed in February that he had already severed ties with Sevotech prior to the investigations.

The Slovak registry showed that Klishchar was a member of Sevotech between December 2022 and September 2023.

Vališ’s name was also associated with SARN Europe s.r.o, according to the Czech registry. Armen Agas, SARN’s deputy to the chairman, was also listed as a beneficial owner, then an associate, in the registry – though the changes took place after the article was published.

However according to the registry, Vališ was also associated with more than a dozen companies in the security sector, and his connections with the two cannot serve as definite proof that one party was involved in another’s alleged criminal acts through Vališ.

The publication also questioned SARN’s legitimacy and claimed its Washington office was empty, though Kyiv Post believes SARN to be a genuine company.

In a November 2023 report by Global Construction Review, SARN was described as a company that “specializes in distressed investments in highly regulated sectors.” The company was also involved in a court case regarding the equity purchase of Retia, a Czech-based radar company, US court documents showed.

While most of the information presented appears factual, Kyiv Post ruled that London Insider’s report was unable to establish a conclusive link between SARN and the procurement scandal.

Peculiar Ukrainian undertone

One peculiarity of the article is its Ukrainian undertone.

Apart from the use of lowercase letters when describing Russia – a common practice among Ukrainians and some pro-Ukrainian journalists after Moscow’s 2022 invasion, the article also contained cultural nuances specific to Ukrainian speakers.

On multiple occasions, the article refers to mortar rounds as mines in the Lviv Arsenal case terms which are interchangeable as common Ukrainian word for mortar rounds, “артилерійська міна,” translates literally as “artillery mines.”

The follow-up article also followed the Ukrainian and European conventions for decimal separators, using dots in place of commas to separate thousands as opposed to English-speaking conventions that call for the opposite.

Coupled with the in-depth understanding of Ukrainian affairs and links to Ukrainian media – most of which are available only in the Ukrainian language – in the article, it’s likely the author is Ukrainian or at the very least not a native English speaker.

Local media in disguise?

The answer to why a supposedly Ukrainian article is published on a site posing as foreign media is less clear-cut.

Kyiv Post cannot rule out the possibility of it being Russian disinformation, though there is also no concrete evidence to suggest that.

One potential reason could be that foreign media are generally more trusted than local media in Ukraine, as The Guardian suggested, and local sites hoped to disguise themselves as foreign news to generate more clicks and borrow that aura of authority that to most Ukrainians comes with a foreign name – to most Ukrainians, London Insider probably sounds more authoritative than, say, Zhytomyr Insider.

Another theory suggests a more sinister motive – blackmail.

An article published by Ukranews in February 2023 – which also mentioned Talk Finance – noted a trend in Ukraine where sites posing as news outlets, threatening to publish damaging information on public figures disguised as investigations containing, at times, “a mixture of truth and fiction,” then demanding money in return for deleting the unfavorable content.

Add to it the authoritative aura associated with foreign media, and one could potentially attach a higher price tag.

Russian disinformation or not, perhaps a more pressing question for our Ukrainian readers is why are outlets posing as foreign media considered more trustworthy than local news outlets, when a great number of talented local journalists are capable of reporting the exact same stories, as demonstrated by the London Insider article?