British state broadcaster the BBC this week ran a major story drumming up the alleged Russia threat and supposed looming retaliatory attacks on UK drone factories supplying Ukraine. The chilly warning purportedly came from a top Russian official – except that the individual in question has not been one in over three decades.
At first glance, the piece titled “UK drone factories may face attacks from ‘unknown sources,’ says Kremlin adviser” looked legit, based on comments made on BBC Newsnight by Andrey Fedorov. The broadcaster presented the interviewee as a heavyweight Russian official, describing him as a “Kremlin adviser” and “Russia’s former deputy foreign minister.”
The latter is partially true: Fedorov was the deputy minister in the RSFSR, the Russian republic of the USSR, between October 1990 and October 1991 prior to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. The other claim, however, is completely false. Fedorov used to be an adviser to Russia’s vice president until late 1993, the same year the vice president position was abolished, and has not held any public office since. Over the past decade, he has been best known as a political commentator and a media personality, frequenting assorted Russian political talk shows.
BBC tries to hide fake news
The piece survived for around five hours on BBC’s website before it was quietly amended. Fedorov was ‘demoted’ to a “pro-Kremlin commentator who frequently appears on Russian television,” yet no official retraction of the initial claim was made. The description, while still debatable, given that Fedorov is known for frequently spelling doom and gloom for Moscow, citing his purported high-ranking sources at home and overseas, is not explicitly untrue.
The BBC also did not do a particularly good job of purging the fake, which survived on several of its platforms. A BBC Newsnight Facebook post on the matter still cryptically describes Fedorov as a “President Putin ally” at the moment of the publication, while its post on X claims the commentator “advises President Putin.”
Fake spills all over British media and beyond
The BBC interview with Fedorov was spread across British media alongside his false depiction as a “Putin adviser.” Unlike the source, outlets that reprinted the fake news never bothered to amend it.
Some outlets even managed to outperform the original. The Express, for instance, described Fedorov simultaneously as a “high-ranking Kremlin official” and “high-level Kremlin insider.”
HuffPost UK also described the political commentator as a “presidential adviser” and even ‘promoted’ him to a “key ally to Vladimir Putin.”
The fake also spread beyond the UK media, making it to Al Jazeera with minimal amendments. Following the BBC, Al Jazeera falsely described Fedorov as “an adviser to the Kremlin and a former deputy foreign minister.”
It also made it to Ukrainian media, which generally takes its British counterparts at face value and attempts no independent fact-checking.
Are the fakes bound to roll on?
This was actually not the first time the BBC falsely presented the Russian political commentator. In January of this year, Fedorov made remarks to the BBC’s Radio 4 on the US military hunt for the Marinera oil tanker and was presented as a “Kremlin adviser and former Russian deputy foreign minister.”
The comments spread widely across British media at the time, apparently without any fact-checking, and remain readily available in news articles from major outlets such The Times and The Independent.
The BBC’s flagship Newsnight program is also involved in a legal case involving US President Donald Trump. The show is accused of editing a Trump speech in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly called for violence ahead of the Capitol Hill riots. A BBC documentary also featured a video of Trump spliced with remarks that had actually been made nearly an hour apart. Neither program notified viewers of the edit. Trump is reportedly suing the British state broadcaster for $10 billion for defamation.