Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-01-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to counter Russian propaganda directed at the UK or at NATO.

Mr David Lidington

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is leading a cross-government and international approach to counter Russian misinformation and provide positive, alternative narratives. The UK Government is employing a range of measures to do this, including: strengthening the BBC’s Russian service; setting up and co-ordinating a “Friends of Ukraine” communication hub; leading successful lobbying to create an EU Strategic Communication team in Brussels that is focussed on Eastern Europe; leading the charge to set up the NATO Centre of Excellence for Communication in Riga; helping set-up a NATO trust fund to ensure impactful strategic communication interventions by NATO; and training EU and NATO teams to increase their capacity to rebut Russian misinformation.