• Priority Area Boosting Fact-checking Activities in Europe
• Funding Round / Action Types 4th Funding Round – Scale-up Projects
• Year 2023, 2024
• Country France
• Project Status Ongoing

More than one year after the start of the war in Ukraine, public opinions are still faced with an unrelenting wave of disinformation campaigns used as an operational tool. Multiple examples have shown how fact-checking is essential for the coverage of this war. According to the OECD, Russia’s war against Ukraine is highlighting “the urgent challenges of responding to the threats posed bey the spread of disinformation while maintaining an independent media sector capable of informing the public”. This is what this project is about. The international AFP news agency, a global leader in the field of digital verification with an established bureau and team in Kyiv itself, has already been successful, as part of a first “urgent action” program of the Gulbenkian Foundation, in helping a new media in Ukraine, the national news agency Ukrinform, starting a local fact-check production despite difficult conditions. With this scale up- project, we will go one step further by:

• training a new Ukrainian media, the Kyiv Post, to state-of-the-art fact-checking skills and helping them produce fact-checks on their own
• update the skills of Ukrinform news agency to the latest, fast-moving digital verification techniques, and help them finance more fact-checks
• strengthening the Ukrainian media sector’s resilience as a whole
• hence, helping the Ukrainian public opinion better detect and avoid manipulations
• contributing to boosting trust in media and democratic values in Ukraine

Ukrinform offers a unique multiplier impact to broaden the fact-checking ecosystem in the country: most Ukrainian media are clients of this organization, thus ensuring large and quick dissemination. The involvement of Kyiv Post will increase the awareness of the Ukrainian people towards disinformation not only inside but also outside Ukraine. This outlet has a strong reach with the diaspora in the EU. The UN estimates that 8 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the start of the war.