At the beginning of August 2023, a statement by the head of European diplomacy circulated on the Internet, who allegedly appealed to African states with a request to refuse Russian grain, making a choice between hunger and slavery. We decided to check whether the official said something similar.
It was alleged that the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, in an address to African countries, said: “By accepting free Russian grain you are giving up independence. They are trying to revive slavery in the land of the free, to bring you to your knees. You have a choice between hunger and human dignity.” The news about this was spread by many popular Telegram channels, including “Ne.Sugar"(308,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Bullet"(147,000), "Army 🅉 / SVO News"(136,000), "Sheikh Tamir" (122,000) and "Ostashko! Important"(119,000).
The news of Borrell's remarks came amid calls from the world community for Russia to resume the grain deal. July 17 Russia came out from the Black Sea Initiative, which provided for the unhindered export of grain from three Ukrainian ports. The next day the Russian army began strike on Ukrainian port infrastructure, including grain storage facilities. The EU, US and UK condemned Moscow's actions, and the UN issued statement, in which she recalled that Russia is endangering the poorest countries in need of food.
On July 27-28, a Russia-Africa summit was held in St. Petersburg, dedicated, among other things, to food security. Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking at the plenary session of the event stated: “Russia will always be a responsible international supplier of agricultural products. We will continue to support the countries and regions most in need, we will supply our grain and other food, including free of charge, as well as within the framework of the UN food program. Yesterday, as you know, we announced that in the next three to four months we will supply 25-50 thousand tons of grain to six African countries free of charge.” After this, news appeared about Borrell’s call to African countries to starve for the sake of freedom.
There is no such statement on the site European External Action Service, neither in blog official on this site, nor in Twitter-Borrell's account. He didn’t talk about it in the interview either. On the contrary, Borrell statedthat the EU does not intend to require African countries to choose a side in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. There is no trace of this news in the English-language media either.
The earliest mention of the statement that we were able to find “Verified” was a post in the Telegram channel “And here is my Yandex wallet", published on August 4 at 9:41 Moscow time. The posts in this channel are satirical in nature (as stated directly in the description channel) and often become the primary source for propaganda Telegram channels, which, in turn, present the “news” as real. For example, in February it sold widely Quote from the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen that she allegedly does not believe in the White House’s involvement in the Nord Stream explosions because of the “impeccable reputation” of the United States. This was also originally a joke news in the same channel.
Two days after the publication of news about Borrell, the Telegram channel “Here’s my Yandex wallet” appeared one more entry - this time with screenshots of posts that mentioned a fictitious quote from a European official, and the comment: “Eat to your health.”
Thus, the news that Borrell allegedly called on African countries to refuse Russian grain and starve for independence was initially satirical.
Cover photo: social networks
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