Abdel Aziz Majarmeh is grieving his 13-year-old son
States are there to protect. But so are fathers.
Abdel Aziz Majarmeh was standing next to his 13-year-old son, Islam, as he was shot dead by Israeli forces this month at the entrance to Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank.
"My son fell to the ground, and then I heard the sound of a shot," he said. "An army jeep came up and five or six soldiers pointed their weapons at me, telling me to leave. I didn't even know my son was martyred. I started dragging him away."
Abdel Aziz said he had gone to the camp – occupied by Israel's army since January – to retrieve family documents from his home there.
"There is no one for me to complain to," he told me. "They control everything. The Palestinian Authority can't even protect itself – it only implements the decisions of the Jews."
As a Palestinian, Abdel Aziz is resigned to his powerlessness. As a father, he's tormented.
"In my mind, I keep asking that soldier: why pick on a 13-year-old boy? I'm standing right next to him. Shoot me. Why are you shooting children? I'm here, shoot me."
Reuters
Abdel Aziz buried his son Islam on 9 September
Israel's army said it had fired to neutralize a threat posed by suspects who had approached them in a closed military area, and was examining the incident.
It refused to clarify what threat the teenager had posed.
Cities like Jenin were put under the full control of the Palestinian Authority three decades ago, under the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Peace Accords.
They were meant to be the seeds from which statehood would grow.
But Israel says it was terrorism that flourished there. In January, it sent tanks into Jenin and the neighbouring city of Tulkarem to crush armed Palestinian groups, saying it would apply lessons learned in Gaza.
Since then, Israeli forces have remained, razing large areas of the camps in both cities, and demolishing buildings in other areas.
The UK, France and other countries are now set to recognise a Palestinian state, as Israeli control spreads across the West Bank and the Gaza War grinds on.
Jenin's mayor, Mohammed Jarrar, took me to the camp entrance near where Islam was shot. The army vehicles stationed here on my previous visits are nowhere to be seen, but a large earth berm now blocks the road in, and locals say Israeli snipers still scan the area from the buildings overhead.
Mr Jarrar told me around 40% of Jenin was now a military area for Israeli forces, with around a quarter of residents – including the entire camp – displaced from their homes.
"It was clear from the beginning this was a major political plan, not a security operation," he told me. "This Israeli government wants to annex the West Bank and in preparation for that, it wants to prevent any [armed] opposition to its plan."
Israel has also placed the Palestinian Authority under a long-term economic siege, withholding tax revenues the PA needs to pay teachers and police.
Israel accuses it of funding terrorism by compensating the families of Palestinian militants who are killed. The PA says it has now scrapped that payment scheme.
Mr Jarrar said it was now very challenging to provide even basic services to the local population, and to persuade young people not to leave.
Against this backdrop, he said, the recognition of a Palestinian state by Britain, France and others is important, even after more than 140 other nations have already done so.
"It confirms the fact that the Palestinian people possess a state, even if it is under occupation," he told me. "I know that this recognition will lead to [greater] occupation of the West Bank. But even so I believe recognition is more important, because it will shape the future of the Palestinian people, and the international community will be called on to defend their rights."
Recognition of a Palestinian state by the UK and France is also a recognition of the political chasm between Israel and its European allies over this issue.
"There will be no Palestinian state," Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told settlers in the West Bank last week. "This place is ours. We will see to our heritage, our land and our security."
Netanyahu has built his career on preventing a Palestinian state, and his government has pushed hard on expanding settlements in the West Bank.
His far-right allies have been pushing for formal annexation, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently outlining a plan to annex 82% of West Bank, with the remaining Palestinian enclaves cut off from each other.
US President Donald Trump has opposed the recognition of a Palestinian state, but has not publicly criticised Israeli moves towards annexation.
Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and has never left.
Establishing civilian settlements on occupied land is illegal under the Geneva Conventions, but Israel argues that it has a historic Jewish right to the West Bank.
Around half a million settlers now live there, and the Israeli organisation, Peace Now, which tracks settlement expansion, says more than 100 new outposts have appeared across the West Bank in the past two years.
Outposts are illegal under both international and Israeli law, but they receive tacit approval from Netanyahu's government as well as state support in the form of roads, security and utilities.
Earlier this summer, Ayman Soufan saw new neighbours arrive on the hill next to his house, in the hills south of Nablus.
From his window, he and his grandchildren have a clear view of the simple wooden shelter and corrugated iron shed put up by Israeli settlers that Ayman says are from the nearby settlement of Yitzhar.
This outpost appeared near Nablus a few months ago
"This outpost they set up here is to push us out of our house. Every day a settler comes, bangs on the house, shouting 'leave, leave!'," he told me. "They throw their garbage at our doorstep. I call the authorities and they say, "We'll send the army". But the army never comes. The settlers are the army, they are the police, they are everything."
Ayman's family built this house, near the village of Burin, a few years after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
Ayman can see the new outpost from the window of his family home
Israel was temporarily given control over rural areas like this under the Oslo peace accords, with the intention that they would eventually be transferred to a future Palestinian State, after negotiations over settlements there.
But Israeli control has remained, settlements have mushroomed, and human rights groups say Israeli forces are increasingly supportive of settler attacks.
Ayman said his father had died from a heart attack as settlers set fire to the house in 2003, and that his home had been torched several more times since then.
"Who is supposed to protect me," Ayman asked. "The Palestinian police? They can't even prevent this happening in the cities, how will they come here? Here, my security is in the hands of the people who occupy me."
International recognition of a Palestinian state is a good thing, he says, even if little will change on the ground.
"What's coming is worse," he said. "But if I ever leave this house, it'll be when I'm carried out dead. This house where I was born, where I grew up and lived my childhood; every corner has a memory for me. How can I leave it?"
In the decades since the Oslo Accords, Israeli narratives have hardened, armed Palestinian groups have strengthened, and the control of the Palestinian Authority government has been eaten away.
"Palestine was never theirs and will never be theirs," said bereaved father Abdel Aziz Majarmeh. "Sooner or later, today, tomorrow, in a year or two, they will leave this country. And Palestine will be liberated."
The UK and France have clung to the idea that two separate states – Israeli and Palestinian – are the solution to the conflict here, even as Palestinian territory was taken, and Palestinian institutions undermined.
Now the Gaza war, and questions over who will govern Gaza afterwards, have forced that political gridlock into open confrontation, as Netanyahu's far-right allies push hard for annexation.
Some Israelis say the West Bank is like the Wild West: a place where statehood and sovereignty are decided not by laws and declarations but by facts on the ground.
Israel has long argued there can be no Palestinian state without its agreement.
Now, by pushing ahead with recognition, the UK, France and others are signalling that Israel can't cancel statehood alone.
A political fact by Israel's allies to counter its facts on the ground.
Network co-ordinator Alina Juk (left), captured by our undercover filming, listens to instructions about the disinformation campaign
A secret Russian-funded network is attempting to disrupt upcoming democratic elections in an eastern European state, the BBC has found.
Using an undercover reporter, we discovered the network promised to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news undermining Moldova's pro-EU ruling party ahead of the country's 28 September parliamentary ballot.
Participants were paid to find supporters of Moldova's pro-Russia opposition to secretly record - and also to carry out a so-called poll. This was done in the name of a non-existent organisation, making it illegal. The results of this selective sampling, an organiser from the network suggested, could lay the groundwork to question the outcome of the election.
The results of the so-called poll, suggesting the ruling party will lose, have already been published online.
In fact, official polls suggest the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) founded by President Maia Sandu is currently ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP).
We have found links between the secret network and Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor - sanctioned by the US for "the Kremlin's malign influence operations" and now a fugitive in Moscow. The UK has also sanctioned him for corruption.
We have also found links between the network and a non-profit organisation (NGO) called Evrazia.
Evrazia has connections to Mr Shor and was sanctioned by the UK, US and EU for allegedly bribing Moldovan citizens to vote against EU membership last year. The referendum on joining passed, but by a very small margin.
"In 2024 the focus of [Ilan Shor's] campaign was money. This year the focus is disinformation," Moldova's chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, told the BBC World Service.
We asked Ilan Shor and Evrazia to respond to our investigation findings - they did not provide a response.
If you're in the UK you can watch the story on Global Eye, BBC 2 at 19:00 BST on Monday 22 September
Moldova may be small, but sandwiched between Ukraine, and EU-member Romania, it has strategic significance for both Europe and the Kremlin, experts say.
The World Service infiltrated the network - co-ordinated on the messaging app Telegram - through a link sent to us by a whistleblower.
This gave us a crucial insight into how an anti-democratic propaganda network operates.
Our undercover reporter Ana, and 34 other recruits, were asked to attend secret online seminars which would "prepare operatives". With titles like "How to go from your kitchen to national leader", they seemed to serve as a vetting process. Ana and the others had to pass regular tests on what they had learned.
Our reporter was then contacted by a network co-ordinator called Alina Juc. Ms Juc's social media profile says she is from Transnistria, a separatist region of eastern Moldova loyal to Moscow, and her Instagram shows she has made multiple trips to Russia over the past few years.
Ms Juc told Ana she would be paid 3,000 Moldovan lei ($170, £125) a month to produce TikTok and Facebook posts in the run-up to the election, and that she would be sent the money from Promsvyazbank (PSB) - a sanctioned Russian state-owned bank which acts as the official bank for the Russian defence ministry, and is a shareholder in one of Ilan Shor's companies.
Ana and the other recruits were trained to produce social media posts using ChatGPT. Content "attracts people if the picture contains some satire… over reality", they were told, but that too much AI should be avoided to ensure posts felt "organic".
Inside the Telegram group, Ana and the BBC had access to previous instructions issued to participants. Initially, they had been asked for patriotic posts about historical figures in Moldovan history - but gradually the demands had become overtly political.
Ana was asked to post unfounded allegations - including that Moldova's current government is planning to falsify the election results, Moldova's potential EU membership is contingent on its citizens becoming LGBTQ+, and that President Sandu is facilitating child trafficking.
An example of instructions issued by the network to create disinformation - it tells participants to share such unsubstantiated phrases as "[President] Sandu's regime uses children as a living currency" and "SanduPAS [a reference to the ruling party] is involved in human trafficking"
Social media campaigns are now frequently central to national elections. We monitored the social media posts supporting Moldova's ruling party PAS, but did not uncover any obvious disinformation campaign.
Throughout our undercover exercise with the network we only shared posts which were factually accurate, and we limited their number.
We wanted to find out who else was in the network, as we had evidence it was made up of multiple groups similar to the one we infiltrated. We looked for patterns of similar activity across other accounts that we could monitor through our Telegram access.
The network, we concluded, is made up of at least 90 TikTok accounts - some masquerading as news outlets - which have posted thousands of videos totalling more than 23 million views and 860,000 likes since January. Moldova's population is just 2.4 million.
We shared our findings with US-based Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), and it told us its analysis shows the network could be even bigger. The broader network has amassed more than 55 million views and over 2.2 million likes on TikTok since January, DFRLab found.
Getty Images
President Maia Sandu says an attack on her is an attack on the EU
The network did not just post disinformation. Ms Juc also offered Ana 200 Moldovan lei ($12, £9) an hour in cash to conduct unofficial polling, interviewing people in Moldova's capital about their preferred candidates in the election.
Before conducting this task, participants were given training on how to subtly sway those being polled.
They were also asked to secretly tape the interviewees who said they supported the pro-Russian opposition.
Ms Juc revealed this was to "prevent the vote from being rigged" suggesting the survey results and the secret recordings would be used, in the event of a PAS victory, as supposed evidence that it won unfairly.
Our evidence also suggests the network our reporter joined is being bank-rolled from Russia. Ana overheard - and filmed - Alina Juc on the phone asking for money from Moscow.
"Listen, can you bring money from Moscow… I just need to give my people their salaries," we filmed her saying.
It was not clear who would be sending her the money, but we have found links between the network and Ilan Shor via NGO Evrazia.
Getty Images
The network has been linked to Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor, seen campaigning here in 2019 and now a fugitive in Moscow
Ilan Shor and Evrazia did not respond to our investigation findings.
The BBC found photos of Ana's handler, Alina Juc, on Evrazia's website - and one of the Telegram groups Ana was added to was called "Evrazia leaders."
The UK Foreign Office says Evrazia operates "in Moldova on behalf of corrupt fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor… to destabilise Moldovan democracy."
We asked Alina Juc to comment on our findings - she did not respond.
TikTok said it had implemented additional safety and security measures ahead of the elections and continued to "aggressively counter deceptive behaviour". Facebook's owner Meta did not respond to our findings.
The Russian embassy in the UK denied involvement in fake news and electoral interference and claimed that it was the EU that had been interfering in Moldova's election.
The presenter revealed his Parkinson's condition in television interviews
Veteran broadcaster John Stapleton has died at the age of 79 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, his agent has said.
The presenter, who featured widely on programmes including the BBC's Watchdog and GMTV's News Hour and began his career at the Oldham Chronicle, died in hospital on Sunday morning.
His condition was complicated by pneumonia, his agent said.
Jackie Gill said "his son Nick and daughter-in-law Lisa have been constantly at his side and John died peacefully in hospital".
A range of tributes have been paid to Stapleton, including form Good Morning Britain presenter Charlotte Hawkins, who described him as a "brilliant broadcaster" and a "genuinely lovely man".
Newsreader Mark Austin said his death was "incredibly sad".
"A good man and top presenter who could turn his hand to anything. Best wishes to his family," he said.
Stapleton revealed his diagnosis in television interviews in October 2024.
Appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain, he said: "There's no point in being miserable. It won't ever change.
"I mean, Parkinson's is here with me now for the rest of my life. Best I can do is try and control it and take the advice of all the experts."
Stapleton presented BBC's Watchdog with his wife Lynn from 1985 to 1993.
PA Media
Stapleton with fellow broadcaster Vanessa Feltz and jockey Frankie Dettori at Newmarket race course in 1997
Justice Secretary David Lammy made the announcement during a visit to Belmarsh prison in south-east London
Justice Secretary David Lammy has announced 10,000 more prison officers will be given body armour in a bid to improve safety in jails after several high-profile attacks.
Lammy said he was determined to "restore tough law and order" and "ensure prisons are fit for purpose" during a visit to Belmarsh prison in south-east London.
The new equipment is part of a £15m boost in funding, which will also include 500 Tasers for trained staff.
The move comes after three prison officers were taken to hospital after they were allegedly attacked with hot oil and makeshift weapons by Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi at HMP Frankland in April.
Included in the new gear will be protective vests for every prison guard working in high-security facilities.
Lammy said the new investment sent a clear message of support to the country's prison officers.
"Our dedicated prison officers put themselves in harm's way every day to protect us," he said.
"This new investment sends a clear message: we back our staff and we will give them the tools they need to do their jobs safely."
Hashem Abedi has been charged with attempting to murder the HMP Frankland prison officers and is due to appear in court on 25 September.
The three prison officers were taken to hospital with serious injuries following the attack on 11 April.
Lammy told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that it "must be right" to equip prison guards with Tasers and body armour so when they are "faced with these scenes they are able to deal with it".
He added that family members of prison guards were "depending on the state to keep their loved ones safe".
The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC has been appointed to investigate the alleged attack and make recommendations to improve safety for frontline officers.
Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick welcomed the move, saying "frontline officers have been left exposed for far too long".
"They cannot afford more delays - this equipment needs to reach them immediately," he added.
Demonstrations were set off by accusations that flood relief money was embezzled. They are part of a wave of discontent about economic inequality in several countries in Asia.
In 1868, Frédéric Bazille completed two of his most successful figurative paintings, The Family Gathering, started the previous summer, and View of the Village.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Fisherman with a Net (1868), oil on canvas, 137.8 × 86.6 cm, Arp Museum, Remagen, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.
Another painting of figures in a landscape he made that summer is Fisherman with a Net (1868), which the following year was refused by the Salon jury. This was painted on the banks of the River Lez, close to Bazille’s family’s estate at Méric. Unlike most of his other figures in a landscape, it was executed relatively quickly with a single preparatory drawing.
The stark contrast between the flesh figures and the rich greens of the surrounding vegetation makes the two men pop out almost incongruously.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1868-69), oil on canvas, 61.2 × 50 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. Wikimedia Commons.
Bazille remained productive through the following winter, in part because he and Renoir reorganised their shared studio. His portrait of Pierre Auguste Renoir (1868-69) was a quick oil sketch that probably filled in some free time when waiting for models to become available. It was painted over an abandoned still life, and is a wonderfully painterly snapshot in oils.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Woman in Moorish Costume (1869), oil on canvas, 99.7 x 59.1 cm, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA. Wikimedia Commons.
His growing success ensured that he had no difficulty finding models. Woman in Moorish Costume was painted during the winter of 1868-69, and is a nod towards the vogue of ‘orientalism’ at the time.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Edmond Maître (1869), oil on canvas, 83.2 × 64 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.
He also painted his second portrait of Edmond Maître in early 1869. He had met Maître (1840-1898) in 1865. Like Bazille, he had moved to Paris to study, in his case law in 1859, but had become a civil servant to allow him sufficient free time to enjoy his pursuits, including music and art. They were to remain close friends until Bazille’s death.
He was visited by Daubigny, and Alfred Stevens invited him to his evening meetings. With continuing hostility from some members of the Salon jury, notably Jean-Léon Gérôme, Bazille had only one painting, View of the Village, accepted for the Salon of 1869. However, he wasn’t discouraged, and seems to have relished the ongoing battle between the Impressionists and Gérôme.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Summer Scene (Bathers) (1869-70), oil on canvas, 160 × 160.7 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Wikimedia Commons.
Bazille started painting Summer Scene, also known as Bathers, during the summer of 1869 when he was on holiday in Montpellier. He had already made a series of compositional studies starting in February that year, but when he was working on the canvas, he found it hard going, and complained of headaches and other pains.
He eventually opted for a composition based on strong diagonals, in which the bathers in the foreground are in shade, while the two wrestlers in the distance are lit by sunshine. The landscape background was painted from the hot green mixture of grass with birch and pine trees, typical of the banks of the River Lez near Montpellier. He completed this in early 1870, and it was accepted for the Salon of that year, where it was well-received by the critics.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), La Toilette (1870), oil on canvas, 130 x 128 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. Wikimedia Commons.
La Toilette (1870) was one of his three planned projects for the winter of 1869-70. However, with three models required, he had to ask his father for money to cover their cost. This was refused by the Salon jury of 1870, when Daubigny resigned from the jury in protest.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Bazille’s Studio (The Studio on the Rue La Condamine) (1869-70), oil on canvas, 98 x 128.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.
Bazille’s Studio, or The Studio on the Rue La Condamine, was another project he worked on during that winter.
Bazille clearly liked painting his studio, but the three canvases he completed showing his different studios aren’t as simple as they might appear. Inspired by Fantin-Latour’s A Studio in the Batignolles Quarter (1869-70), which includes Bazille, it is in some ways its antithesis.
Bazille was careful in the choice of paintings shown, which include View of the Village on the easel, Fisherman with a Net, Terrace at Méric, and La Toilette as yet unfinished. The largest painting hanging is Renoir’s Landscape with Two Figures, and there is also a small still life by Monet. Bazille used these as pictures within a picture to map his career, from the past to his aspirations for the Salon in 1870, not in his successes so much as in the paintings refused, and better appreciated by the colleagues shown.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Flowers (c 1870), oil on canvas, 63 x 48.5 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. Wikimedia Commons.
Flowers (c 1870) is one of a small group of floral paintings made during the Spring of 1870, when he moved to his own studio in the rue des Beaux-Arts.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), La négresse aux pivoines (Young Woman with Peonies) (1870), oil on canvas, 60.5 × 75.4 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. Wikimedia Commons.
Bazille painted two related but different versions of La négresse aux pivoines (Young Woman with Peonies) in the Spring of 1870. His professional model is the same as that used for La Toilette. She is normally read as being a servant engaged in making the floral arrangement, although in the other version (at the National Gallery of Art in Washington) she appears to be a flower seller.
At the time, the dominant flower, the peony, was a relatively recent import to France, and would probably have been seen as bringing a touch of exoticism to the two paintings. The striking vase may have been borrowed from Fantin-Latour. Rishel has proposed that this painting in Montpellier was intended as homage to Gustave Courbet, and that in Washington to Eugène Delacroix.
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Study for a Young Male Nude (1870), oil on canvas, 147.5 x 139 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. Wikimedia Commons.
In the summer of 1870, Bazille worked on three paintings when he was staying alone at Méric. Study for a Young Male Nude appears odd because it was painted over an unfinished painting of two women in a garden, and the lower third of the canvas shows the lower part of their dresses.
On 19 July 1870, France declared war on Prussia. Within a month, Bazille had enlisted in the Third Zouave Regiment. He spent September training in Algeria, then returned into combat in France. On 28 November 1870, Bazille was killed at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande. He would have celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday just over a week later.
In but eight years of painting, Bazille had shown great technical skill, originality, and high promise for his future in the Impressionist movement. Unlike his close friends Monet and Renoir, he was particularly interested in and adept at depicting figures in landscapes. That brilliant future, which would surely have changed Impressionism too, was abruptly ended in a futile attempt to relieve the Siege of Paris.
Network co-ordinator Alina Juk (left), captured by our undercover filming, listens to instructions about the disinformation campaign
A secret Russian-funded network is attempting to disrupt upcoming democratic elections in an eastern European state, the BBC has found.
Using an undercover reporter, we discovered the network promised to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news undermining Moldova's pro-EU ruling party ahead of the country's 28 September parliamentary ballot.
Participants were paid to find supporters of Moldova's pro-Russia opposition to secretly record - and also to carry out a so-called poll. This was done in the name of a non-existent organisation, making it illegal. The results of this selective sampling, an organiser from the network suggested, could lay the groundwork to question the outcome of the election.
The results of the so-called poll, suggesting the ruling party will lose, have already been published online.
In fact, official polls suggest the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) founded by President Maia Sandu is currently ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP).
We have found links between the secret network and Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor - sanctioned by the US for "the Kremlin's malign influence operations" and now a fugitive in Moscow. The UK has also sanctioned him for corruption.
We have also found links between the network and a non-profit organisation (NGO) called Evrazia.
Evrazia has connections to Mr Shor and was sanctioned by the UK, US and EU for allegedly bribing Moldovan citizens to vote against EU membership last year. The referendum on joining passed, but by a very small margin.
"In 2024 the focus of [Ilan Shor's] campaign was money. This year the focus is disinformation," Moldova's chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, told the BBC World Service.
We asked Ilan Shor and Evrazia to respond to our investigation findings - they did not provide a response.
If you're in the UK you can watch the story on Global Eye, BBC 2 at 19:00 BST on Monday 22 September
Moldova may be small, but sandwiched between Ukraine, and EU-member Romania, it has strategic significance for both Europe and the Kremlin, experts say.
The World Service infiltrated the network - co-ordinated on the messaging app Telegram - through a link sent to us by a whistleblower.
This gave us a crucial insight into how an anti-democratic propaganda network operates.
Our undercover reporter Ana, and 34 other recruits, were asked to attend secret online seminars which would "prepare operatives". With titles like "How to go from your kitchen to national leader", they seemed to serve as a vetting process. Ana and the others had to pass regular tests on what they had learned.
Our reporter was then contacted by a network co-ordinator called Alina Juc. Ms Juc's social media profile says she is from Transnistria, a separatist region of eastern Moldova loyal to Moscow, and her Instagram shows she has made multiple trips to Russia over the past few years.
Ms Juc told Ana she would be paid 3,000 Moldovan lei ($170, £125) a month to produce TikTok and Facebook posts in the run-up to the election, and that she would be sent the money from Promsvyazbank (PSB) - a sanctioned Russian state-owned bank which acts as the official bank for the Russian defence ministry, and is a shareholder in one of Ilan Shor's companies.
Ana and the other recruits were trained to produce social media posts using ChatGPT. Content "attracts people if the picture contains some satire… over reality", they were told, but that too much AI should be avoided to ensure posts felt "organic".
Inside the Telegram group, Ana and the BBC had access to previous instructions issued to participants. Initially, they had been asked for patriotic posts about historical figures in Moldovan history - but gradually the demands had become overtly political.
Ana was asked to post unfounded allegations - including that Moldova's current government is planning to falsify the election results, Moldova's potential EU membership is contingent on its citizens becoming LGBTQ+, and that President Sandu is facilitating child trafficking.
An example of instructions issued by the network to create disinformation - it tells participants to share such unsubstantiated phrases as "[President] Sandu's regime uses children as a living currency" and "SanduPAS [a reference to the ruling party] is involved in human trafficking"
Social media campaigns are now frequently central to national elections. We monitored the social media posts supporting Moldova's ruling party PAS, but did not uncover any obvious disinformation campaign.
Throughout our undercover exercise with the network we only shared posts which were factually accurate, and we limited their number.
We wanted to find out who else was in the network, as we had evidence it was made up of multiple groups similar to the one we infiltrated. We looked for patterns of similar activity across other accounts that we could monitor through our Telegram access.
The network, we concluded, is made up of at least 90 TikTok accounts - some masquerading as news outlets - which have posted thousands of videos totalling more than 23 million views and 860,000 likes since January. Moldova's population is just 2.4 million.
We shared our findings with US-based Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), and it told us its analysis shows the network could be even bigger. The broader network has amassed more than 55 million views and over 2.2 million likes on TikTok since January, DFRLab found.
Getty Images
President Maia Sandu says an attack on her is an attack on the EU
The network did not just post disinformation. Ms Juc also offered Ana 200 Moldovan lei ($12, £9) an hour in cash to conduct unofficial polling, interviewing people in Moldova's capital about their preferred candidates in the election.
Before conducting this task, participants were given training on how to subtly sway those being polled.
They were also asked to secretly tape the interviewees who said they supported the pro-Russian opposition.
Ms Juc revealed this was to "prevent the vote from being rigged" suggesting the survey results and the secret recordings would be used, in the event of a PAS victory, as supposed evidence that it won unfairly.
Our evidence also suggests the network our reporter joined is being bank-rolled from Russia. Ana overheard - and filmed - Alina Juc on the phone asking for money from Moscow.
"Listen, can you bring money from Moscow… I just need to give my people their salaries," we filmed her saying.
It was not clear who would be sending her the money, but we have found links between the network and Ilan Shor via NGO Evrazia.
Getty Images
The network has been linked to Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor, seen campaigning here in 2019 and now a fugitive in Moscow
Ilan Shor and Evrazia did not respond to our investigation findings.
The BBC found photos of Ana's handler, Alina Juc, on Evrazia's website - and one of the Telegram groups Ana was added to was called "Evrazia leaders."
The UK Foreign Office says Evrazia operates "in Moldova on behalf of corrupt fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor… to destabilise Moldovan democracy."
We asked Alina Juc to comment on our findings - she did not respond.
TikTok said it had implemented additional safety and security measures ahead of the elections and continued to "aggressively counter deceptive behaviour". Facebook's owner Meta did not respond to our findings.
The Russian embassy in the UK denied involvement in fake news and electoral interference and claimed that it was the EU that had been interfering in Moldova's election.
India's Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, whose office warned the change would disrupt families
The Indian government has said a new $100,000 (£74,000) fee for applicants seeking US skilled worker visas will have "humanitarian consequences".
President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the new fee for H-1B visa applications, which is more than 60 times the amount currently charged, to go into effect on 21 September.
Workers from India receive by far the most skilled visas in the programme, at just more than 70% of those issued.
Some US tech companies reportedly advised employees with H-1B visas to stay in the US or, if they were out of the country, to try to return immediately. The White House then on Saturday clarified the fee will not apply to current visas or renewal applications.
A statement from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday said the fee would have humanitarian consequences "by way of the disruption caused for families".
The Indian government "hopes that these disruptions can be addressed suitably by the US authorities", it also said.
The exchange of skilled workers has "contributed enormously" to both nations, the statement said, adding: "Policy makers will therefore assess recent steps taking into account mutual benefits, which include strong people-to-people ties between the two countries."
The statement did not provide specifics on any potential response from India's government.
Since Trump imposed punshing tariffs on India last month for purchasing Russian oil, the two countries have been locked in tense trade negotiations. The US exported $41.5bn worth of goods to India in 2024, and imported more than double that, $87.3 bn, according to the US Trade Representative's office.
On Saturday, the Indian government said its commerce minister Piyush Goyal would visit the US on Monday for trade talks, according to Reuters.
Making such a major change to the H-1B programme in such a narrow window of created "considerable uncertainty for businesses, professionals, and students across the world", India's leading trade body Nasscom said.
In announcing the planned change, the White House said the visas were not being used as intended, citing data it said suggests some visas are being "abused" to undercut American wages and outsource IT jobs.
But the order allows for "case-by-case exemptions if in the national interest", the White House said.
The skilled visa route is intended to allow companies in the US to temporarily employ foreign workers with "highly specialised knowledge".
Just under 400,000 H-1B visas were approved in 2024, of which around 260,000 were renewals, according to US-based Pew Research Center.
Data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows that in the first half of 2025 Amazon received the most H-1B visa approvals, with 10,044.
In second was Indian technology company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with 5,505.
Trump's proclamation applies to applications submitted for workers currently outside the US, which must be "accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000" (about 8.8mn Indian Rupees). Currently, the administrative fees for an application total $1,500.
Amazon, Microsoft and JP Morgan were among the companies to advise employees with H-1B visas to remain in the US, and for those outside of the US to try and return before the deadline, according to Reuters.
The advisories appeared to be precautionary, given the order did not say H-1B visa holders would be barred from re-entering the country or charged the new fee if they were temporarily out of the country, after Sunday.
According to an internal advisory, seen by Business Insider, Amazon said employees unable to return to the US before the order takes effect should avoid attempting US re-entry "until further guidance is provided".
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