By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
A screenshot from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
MOSCOW — Russia’s Foreign Ministry got into the fake news business in a splashy way on Wednesday.
No, not by creating it. That dark art seems to emanate from other, even more opaque branches of the Russian government.
Rather, Maria V. Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the ministry, unveiled a new section on its website meant to highlight articles that it considers to be fake news, including one by The New York Times.
Just in case anybody missed the point, each article on the Foreign Ministry website carried a big red label reading “FAKE” in English and a line saying that the information in the article “does not correspond to reality.”
Russia actually announced something of a fake news double whammy, since the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, told Parliament on Wednesday that the military had created a special task force assigned to wage information warfare, although he did not provide any details.
That was no surprise to officials in the United States and Europe, who have been grappling with the Kremlin’s information warfare for at least the last two years. The Foreign Ministry’s new venture in singling out fake news seemed to fit a pattern identified by many analysts of creating alternative realities meant to sow confusion in people’s minds, in that way discrediting all news sources.
It was hard for some critics to take the ministry’s fake news detector seriously, and some suggested that inclusion there was something of a badge of honor, an indication that the article had hit close to home.
The Foreign Ministry has become a propaganda wing serving the Kremlin rather than a diplomatic service that establishes foreign policy, said Alexei A. Venediktov, the longtime editor of the respected Echo of Moscow radio station.
“You shouldn’t worry at all,” he said, but should instead consider being singled out by the Foreign Ministry to be an honor “like a medal.”
Ms. Zakharova introduced the fake news section during her weekly, nationally televised briefing. “We will publish examples of propaganda hoaxes from various media outlets and give links to sources,” she said. “The aim is to demonstrate the main trends in fake news publications about our country and do everything to stop their dissemination.”
It was not immediately clear what criteria the ministry would apply in its effort to identify what it considered to be fake news, and Ms. Zakharova declined to answer questions beyond what she said at her briefing.
The spokeswoman emphasized that the Foreign Ministry would consider the news fake when it failed to include Russian reaction or the Russian position on the issue. News published from unidentified sources that constituted opinion or unverified fact also qualified, according to Ms. Zakharova.
The initiative appeared to be a reaction to widespread reporting over the past year focused on fake news emanating from Russia. Ms. Zakharova outlined an appeal process, noting that news organizations could ask to have their work removed.
“Russia is being accused of doing this, but how can you accuse us of disseminating untrue information by government agencies and the media while you are doing the same against Russia?” Ms. Zakharova said. “While publishing information about Russia, the world media is doing the same thing — they never cite concrete facts — this is a sad paradox.”
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There is a rather distinct gap between what Russia is accused of disseminating and what it labeled “fake news.”
After Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 civilians on board, for example, local rebel commanders at first bragged about shooting down an aircraft at the very spot.
When the extent of the tragedy emerged, Russia went into overdrive pumping out alternative versions, most of them fanciful and most blaming Ukraine. One such version suggested that it was a failed attempt to shoot down President Vladimir V. Putin’s jet, which was aloft at the same time.
A Dutch-led investigation concluded that the powerful surface-to-air missile system that took down the airliner had been trucked in from Russia at the request of Russian-backed separatists and returned over the border the same night.
As tensions with Europe escalated over the past several years, all sorts of false news stories emerged. State news media and Russian officials falsely claimed that a 13-year-old Russian immigrant in Germany had been kidnapped and raped, for example, and websites linked to Russia spread rumors, like one that Sweden had been approached to sell weapons to female fighters for the Islamic State.
The stories that Russia labeled “fake news” were certainly more mainstream fare.
The initial offerings included five articles from various large organizations including The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Daily Telegraph and NBC News. Indicating that its reach would be wide, however, one article was included from the Santa Monica Observer in California, about the sudden deaths of a number of Russian diplomats in recent months.
Seemingly borrowing a practice from President Trump, Russia appears to be labeling as fake any articles it dislikes. The one from Bloomberg, for example, quoted Richard Ferrand, the chief of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign in France, as accusing Russia of carrying out cyberattacks against the campaign. It quoted Dmitri S. Peskov, Russia’s presidential spokesman, as denying any link.
The New York Times article, by a veteran national security reporter and former Moscow correspondent, Michael R. Gordon, detailed concerns in the American administration about Russian violations of a nuclear arms treaty. The story quoted unidentified officials as well as experts in the field, and it noted Russian criticism of some aspects of the treaty.
A spokeswoman for The Times strongly defended the article and criticized the practice of simply labeling news reports fake without any substantiating evidence.
“It’s a dangerous and troubling situation for governments or individuals to simply assign the label of fake news to a story they don’t like, instead of challenging specific facts or offering counter evidence,” said Eileen Murphy, the spokeswoman. “We stand by our reporting.”
Russian social media erupted with a certain amount of derision about the whole enterprise, particularly since the link in Russian to the page translated as “publications and refutations.”
“So to slap a red stamp and grandly say that something is ‘fake’ — this is what they call refutation these days?” wrote one Russian man on Facebook. A reporter for the English-language Moscow Times asked via Twitter whether he could borrow the big red stamp.
Ms. Zakharova said that the ministry would not be assessing Russian news media for fake news. It deals with foreign relations, she noted.
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