The mission of long-term observers at the extraordinary parliamentary elections in Ukraine of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) has recorded numerous examples of the Russian disinformation campaign against Ukraine in the foreign media.

"The UWC Mission has noted various disinformation narratives during Ukraine's Parliamentary Election, which have been disseminated in various languages through traditional and social media outside of Ukraine. The target audience has been the international community with different degrees of involvement with Ukraine," the UWC's report made public at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday reads.

The mission's preliminary report states, inter alia, that some French media outlets were noticed in the dissemination of misinformation on "the emergence of a nationalist, anti-Russian, and xenophobic extreme right" as well as "the rise of neo-Nazi radical ideologies in the heart of a former communist state."

Also the mission said about the spread of the thesis that "the president is considered a puppet of oligarchs," either controlled by western countries, and "Ukraine is not a sovereign country but simply a political experiment of Washington."

In addition, observers noticed such distortions as "the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of 21 July were the most closed ones in the entire history of the republic."

"Disinformation has been and remains an integral part of Russian hybrid warfare, which includes military, economic, cyber, and information components. The ultimate goal of Russian hybrid warfare, including disinformation, is to weaken Ukraine in order to return it to the Russian sphere of influence and domination," Eugene Czolij, the head of the Mission said.

He noted that UWC LTOs (long-term observers) monitored the media in 20 languages for any evidence of disinformation, namely: Arabic, Azeri, Bosnian, Czech, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Italian, Kazakh, Latvian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, and Ukrainian.