Russian state television broadcast a 15-minute report in a show - Man and the Law - on groundless conspiracy theories that the billionaire Bill Gates is responsible for coronavirus pandemics.
The report came on the same day as a European Union report that state media in Russia were conducting a "coordinated campaign to wreak havoc" on the origin of the virus.
In tagging the founder of Microsoft, the report cites a variety of secret and non-contextual sources, including a website called GreenMedinfo.com., The anti-vaccination site Robert F Kennedy Jr and a pro-Christian Canadian site - LifeSiteNews.com.
The "Russian experts" also used a strange unfounded reference to a coronavirus vaccine, which is stored in the microchip and inserted under human skin.
"If we don't adapt to the system they created, they can 'shut you down' with a button!" says the blogger Vlad Kopikov in the report.
Russian state television accuses Bill Gates of Coronavirus
A week before the Russian show aired, a New York Times report claimed that "disinformation 'circulating in the United States about Bill Gates is now the most common lie of the online coronavirus."
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| Bill Gates in a podcast on April 24th |
"Today the greatest danger of global catastrophe does not seem so (exhibit an exploding bomb). But so (show a form of a virus similar to today's coronavirus)."
Gates made this speech in 2015 and has been viewed over 25 million times on YouTube. Some conspiracy theorists have claimed that Gates' conscience is at the root of the coronavirus pandemic, which appears in the Russian show Man and the Law. Gates was asked about conspiracy theories during a podcast on April 24. The Russian show was broadcast on the same day.
"So disinformation is a very dangerous thing, especially in this type of crisis, where people's willingness to believe in crazy things is high. Who should we blame? You know, we are all in a difficult situation - I am less than the others. But generally, you know that someone says that we should blame this state or that person because it is different from us and it is dangerous."
Russian state media have given space to the transmission of conspiracy theories for several months. The February report said that Trump was responsible. Now the same TV channel claims that Bill Gates is responsible.
All of this comes after Covid-19 cases are growing rapidly in Russia.