Manipulation The Austrians demand to stop supporting Ukraine
Russian media write about this. The majority of Austrians allegedly want their country to maintain neutrality.
Allegedly, for this, it is necessary to stop helping Kyiv and lift sanctions from Russia. The motivation for such statements was allegedly added by an article in the Austrian edition of Express with an open letter of invitation. 47,000 Austrians have already signed it. It is not so.
According to the fact-checkers of The Insider project, the letter published in Express contains pro-Russian rhetoric. Apart from the total number of signatories, there is no other information that could be used to claim that the letter was signed by Austrians. The letter doesn`t include names or pseudo-users, so there is no evidence that these are people and not bots. Anyone from any country can register and vote, as the site does not verify at least the email address. The population of Austria is about 9 million, so even 47 thousand signatories are only 0.5%, not the majority, as agitprop claims.
The author of the "blogger and entrepreneur" initiative is Gerald Markel. He blogs about politics on Telegram. During the coronavirus pandemic, he spread fakes about the alleged sudden death from vaccination, which he called fascism, and compared the government's policy to 1938. Markel also supports Vladimir Putin's policy.