The United States ended its cooperation with European Union countries in countering disinformation spread by Russia, China and Iran, the Financial Times reported on September 8, 2025, citing its sources. Four days later, discussing the story on the News.by program “Editors’ Club,” Belteleradiocompany chairman Ivan Eismant offered what he claimed was the reason for the decision:
“It turned out that 89% of fake stories were being produced by anti-disinformation agencies. Congress was presented with a report that showed thousands of European organizations funded by the United States to fight disinformation were themselves fabricating stories to keep the money flowing. That included fakes about the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.”
A day earlier, on September 11, the authors of the Telegram channel “Shkvarka News” posted a video with the same claims and the Financial Times logo. The WTF team checked the British outlet’s official social media pages and found no such video. The production style also differs from authentic Financial Times videos: the font is different, original clips always include subtitles and a voiceover, while the one published by “Shkvarka News” only has text on the screen.
The video itself shows the White House, Congress and headlines from the Financial Times and The Independent about the United States terminating a State Department memorandum. We checked: articles with those headlines do exist in both outlets, but they make no mention of fact-checking agencies creating fake stories. Nor do they mention any report about thousands of European organizations fabricating such material.
The reasons for ending the cooperation were different: Republicans in Congress accused the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which was responsible for countering disinformation, of censorship and restricting free speech in the United States, and shut it down. GEC director James Rubin called the closure “unilateral disarmament” that weakens the West in its fight against Russian and Chinese propaganda.