While preparing for the publication of the monthly monitoring of Belarusian YouTube channels for April 2023, we noticed a clickbait video title: “Xavier Moro: “Sanctions – one of the reasons for France’s economic problems”. The interview was published on the YouTube channel of International Radio “Belarus
International Radio ‘Belarus’ posts a huge number of videos on its channel. From May 8, 2022 to May 8, 2023, 780 videos were published.
They don’t garner a large number of views, but they have quite dubious titles. They appeal to unknown foreign experts.
So who is this ‘French’ expert Xavier Moreau?
Xavier Moreau is a former paratrooper officer with dual French-Russian citizenship. He owns the Moscow holding company ‘Sokol’, which employs former servicemen of the elite troops of the French army and Russian special services, and also provides consulting and security to French companies. Since the early 2000s, Xavier has been living in Russia. He is the author of books such as ‘New Great Russia: from the collapse of the USSR to the return of Vladimir Putin’ and ‘Ukraine – why France was wrong’.
Xavier Moreau is the creator of the portal Stratpol.com, where only ultra-right and pro-Russian opinions are published:
Sometimes he is called the “Kremlin’s press secretary“, as according to Challenges, he relayed Putin’s speech through a Youtube channel that was closed at the end of 2022.
From the analysis of publications in telegram channels, it can be seen that he began to be actively quoted from the moment of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine in February 2022:
The channels that refer to his expertise are extremely toxic and fronting Russian propaganda:
Xavier Moreau is a proponent of conspiracy theories and since February 2022 has classified Ukraine as one of the ‘Kiev formations’ and describes it as a ‘territory without a president, without a state and, ultimately, without a people. According to him, the Maidan revolution of 2014 was a ‘coup’ instigated by Washington, and the crash of Boeing MH-17 in 2014 (shot down by a missile launched by pro-Russian separatist forces) a crime committed by ‘Ukro-Nazis’.
ChatGPT thus formulates how a biased person differs from an expert:”
A biased person tends to favor certain views, opinions, or people based on their own preferences, beliefs, or prejudices, rather than on objective criteria. This can interfere with fair and impartial analysis and evaluation of information.
An expert should be able to analyze and evaluate information objectively, based on facts, data, and validated methods. Experts should strive for impartiality to make accurate, reliable, and useful conclusions and recommendations.
Bias can undermine trust in an expert, as it can lead to incorrect decisions, manipulation of information, or misinterpretation of data. It can also negatively impact the expert’s reputation and their ability to perform their professional duties.
However, it should be noted that complete elimination of bias is impossible, as people always have their beliefs, perceptions, and worldview. It’s important for experts to be aware of their biases and strive to minimize their impact on their work in order to provide the most objective results possible.
Conclusion: In the era of hybrid information warfare and post-truth, it is always necessary to check which experts a media outlet refers to. After all, these experts can turn out to be conduits for disinformation and propaganda.
