Belarusian propagandists to be trained in combating fake news with EU funds

Belaru­sian state-run media employ­ees are being invit­ed to the cap­i­tal of Bul­gar­ia for an event titled “Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and the Fight Against Fake News.” The dis­cus­sion is fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union.

Andrei Kry­vasheyeu and Snezhana Todor­o­va sign a coop­er­a­tion agree­ment between the jour­nal­ists’ unions of Belarus and Bul­gar­ia. Pho­to: Min­sk-Novosti

The announce­ment about the event in Sofia, Bul­gar­ia, was dis­trib­uted by the Min­sk-Novosti agency: “The Union of Bul­gar­i­an Jour­nal­ists invites rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian Union of Jour­nal­ists to par­tic­i­pate in a dis­cus­sion on the top­ic ‘Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and the Fight Against Fake News: What Solu­tion Will Be Most Effec­tive?’”

Who will teach regime propagandists to fight disinformation?

Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion obtained by BAJ, par­tic­i­pants in the event include Snezhana Todor­o­va, chair of the board of the Union of Bul­gar­i­an Jour­nal­ists (UBJ), UBJ mem­bers, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the pan-Euro­pean por­tal Eualive.net, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the EU4Debunk project Geor­gi Gotev and Kali­na Angelo­va. The venue in Sofia is being pro­vid­ed by the UBJ.

The Union of Bul­gar­i­an Jour­nal­ists is one of two jour­nal­ist orga­ni­za­tions in Bul­gar­ia that has notably con­tin­ued to coop­er­ate with Belaru­sian and Russ­ian offi­cial media. Last year, mem­bers of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists who stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ukraine and inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media already drew atten­tion to this.

UBJ head Snezhana Todor­o­va has a rep­u­ta­tion in her coun­try as a Rus­sia sym­pa­thiz­er. She received the Order of Friend­ship from Vladimir Putin in Sep­tem­ber 2025 and fre­quent­ly vis­its Rus­sia and Belarus. Back in 2014, in an inter­view with the Sto­letie por­tal, Todor­o­va stat­ed that “the revival of fas­cism and the advance of Ban­derites fright­en Bul­gar­i­ans.” Judg­ing by her sub­se­quent state­ments, her views have not changed.

At the same time, the UBJ web­site wrote in con­sid­er­able detail about the 2020 Belaru­sian protests and cur­rent­ly repub­lish­es news about Andrzej Poc­zobut and oth­er impris­oned Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists.

Union of Bul­gar­i­an Jour­nal­ists web­site. Screen­shot

Accord­ing to Bul­gar­i­an inves­tiga­tive resources, in 2009 the Com­mis­sion on Archives revealed infor­ma­tion about Todorova’s con­nec­tions with the Sixth Direc­torate of the State Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice for Com­bat­ing Ide­o­log­i­cal Sab­o­tage.

Accord­ing to Bul­gar­i­an media reports, Todor­o­va oper­at­ed under the pseu­do­nym “Vio­le­ta” in Sovi­et Bul­gar­ia from 1988 until the change of gov­ern­ment. In the late 1980s, Todor­o­va head­ed the inter­na­tion­al depart­ment of the Union of Bul­gar­i­an Work­ers.

In addi­tion to her lead­er­ship posi­tion at the UBJ, Snezhana Todor­o­va also heads the Bul­gar­ia-Rus­sia Coor­di­na­tion Coun­cil under Roskongress, a non-gov­ern­men­tal Russ­ian foun­da­tion and clas­sic “soft pow­er” orga­ni­za­tion.

Whose money is funding the training in Sofia?

The pan-Euro­pean por­tal Eualive.net, cre­at­ed in spring 2025 with­in the EU4Debunk project, is legal­ly reg­is­tered in Brus­sels. It is run by Bel­gian and Bul­gar­i­an cit­i­zen Geor­gi Gotev, whose email address is post­ed on the Min­sk-Novosti web­site for reg­is­tra­tion for the anti-fake news dis­cus­sion.

The mis­sion of Eualive.net is “to deep­en pub­lic under­stand­ing of EU affairs for a broad, glob­al audi­ence. [The orga­ni­za­tion is] forg­ing con­tent part­ner­ships with media, NGOs, and think tanks across bor­ders. We sup­port a strong, unit­ed Europe while main­tain­ing a crit­i­cal lens on EU insti­tu­tions. [We are] unapolo­get­i­cal­ly clear in iden­ti­fy­ing the aggres­sor in the Ukraine war,” Eualive.net states.

The AI4Debunk project, with­in which Eualive.net oper­ates and the Sofia con­fer­ence is being held, “brings togeth­er an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­sor­tium, encom­pass­ing a wide range of dis­ci­plines – from soci­ol­o­gists and media pro­fes­sion­als to soft­ware devel­op­ers and AI and ML experts, with the goal of cov­er­ing the whole scope of dis­in­for­ma­tion process­es in a com­pre­hen­sive way.”

AI4Debunk project web­site. Screen­shot

The AI4Debunk con­sor­tium is head­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Latvia in Riga as coor­di­na­tor.

The AI4Debunk web­site states that its activ­i­ties are fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union, how­ev­er, “views and opin­ions expressed are how­ev­er those of the author(s) only and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect those of the Euro­pean Union or the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Nei­ther the Euro­pean Union nor the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion can be held respon­si­ble for them.”

As a reminder, accord­ing to BAJ data, 28 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Belarus.