MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin has allegedly launched a secret propaganda war to “destabilize” the UK, which is being led by a team of glamorous journalists.
The glamorous women fronting a new Russian news agency in Britain have reportedly been tasked with spreading conspiracy theories, according to experts.
Oxana Brazhnik and Johanna Ross head the newly opened British bureau of Sputnik news agency which experts claim has been tasked with destabilising the country.
Since opening in Edinburgh, it has peddled suggestions that MP Jo Cox may have been murdered as part of a plot by EU Remain supporters to sway the referendum.
It also reported that the West never agreed to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, a key argument used by Putin to justify his invasion of Ukraine.
Miss Brazhnik, the bureau chief, also has close ties to the Russian President, it was reported by The Times.
She was previously a political advisor to Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Vyacheslav Volodin, who was placed on a EU sanctions blacklist for his role in the annexation of Crimea.
Johanna Ross, Sputnik’s executive producer, was a reception supervisor at a Dundee hotel before becoming a journalist only two years ago.
She worked on Russia Insider, a Putin-friendly news website, in Moscow for eight months.
The agency’s online editor is former House of Lords researcher Ana Lyon who previously worked for state-controlled radio broadcaster Voice Of Russia.
A Nato source told The Times: ‘The Russian information effort is to muddy the waters, to create uncertainty.’
Sputnik did not respond to the Mail Online’s request for comment last night.
Russian officials have also sought to gain a foothold in British universities. The University of Edinburgh received £221,000 from a foundation set up by Putin to open a cultural center.
