Eva Bartlett

In late 2016, Bartlett generated controversy over a video on a Russian-funded web channel that went viral, in which she said that Syrians "overwhelmingly support" Bashar al-Assad, as evidenced by the results of the 2014 election, an election widely denounced, e.g. by the European Union, as an illegitimate sham.[17][18][5][19]

She has characterized the White Helmets as being part of a Western propaganda campaign,[20] alleging that rescues by that organization are hoaxes whereby they "recycle" the same children in footage of staged rescues,[17][18][21] and that "no one in eastern Aleppo has heard of [the White Helmets]".[17] In the same video, Bartlett falsely claimed that the al-Quds Hospital bombing in April 2016, where 55 died, never occurred, saying it was rebel propaganda.[5][22] Bartlett's claims were amplified by Russian-controlled outlets such as RT, Sputnik News and In The Now.[23][17] The claims were found to be false by Channel 4 News and Snopes.[1][4][5][6] The broader "same girl" internet meme has been categorized as a derivation of the "crisis actor" conspiracy theories.[24] The video presented Bartlett as an independent journalist speaking to the United Nations when in fact the event was staged by the Syrian government.[25]

In 2017, Bartlett was rebuked by The Syria Campaign, an advocacy group that campaigns on behalf of the White Helmets.[26] Relying on research done by the social media intelligence company Graphika, it released a report alleging a Russian disinformation campaign in the Syrian Civil War, according to which Bartlett was part of a network seeking to discredit the White Helmets in order to minimise war crimes committed by the Assad regime.[27][28] According to the publication, YouTube had removed several videos of Bartlett because they were on "accounts linked to Russian disinformation".[27] An equal characterization of Bartlett's activity has been made in a 2017 report on the situation in Aleppo, by the American think-tank Atlantic Council.[8][23]

According to Janine di Giovanni in The New York Review of Books, Bartlett is a core member of a group of "Assad’s Western apologists", alongside Vanessa Beeley, Sharmine Narwani, and Max Blumenthal; their work is disseminated by a "spectrum of far-left, anti-West conspiracy theorists; anti-Semites; supporters of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah; libertarians; and far-right groups".[29]

Research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in 2022 identified Bartlett as a member of a network of social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations who disseminated disinformation about the Syria conflict, noting that one video featuring her had been viewed 4.5 million times on Facebook.[30] Coda Story noted that by March 2022 the different versions of the video had been viewed 10 million times.[31]

Bartlett went[note 2] to North Korea in 2017 alongside Tim Anderson, and said that western media coverage of the country is aimed to "detract from America’s past and current crimes against the Korean people, and to garner support for yet another American-led slaughter of innocent people".[16][32]

In 2022, Bartlett spent time in Ukraine, reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine from a pro-Russian perspective, sometimes with journalists from Russian state-owned channel Russia Today.[33][34] The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified her as one of the twelve key Western influencers spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation about the Russo-Ukrainian War. Bartlett is not directly employed by RT, although she has regularly written op-eds on RT’s website, makes videos with RT correspondents and shares RT content. Facebook has labeled her posts with a disclaimer that she “may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government.”[10][35] In July 2022, she was a speaker at the Russian-organised International Public Tribunal on Ukraine in Moscow, which aimed to "collect data and prove the commission of war crimes by the Kyiv regime".[12]