14:34

The broadcasting regulator Ofcom has disclosed it believes that messages broadcast as “audience tweets” during Alex Salmond’s controversial chatshow on the Kremlin-funded channel RT were fake.

In two footnotes to its statement today that it has launched seven new investigations into RT’s coverage after the Salisbury nerve agent attack, Ofcom says it had already started other inquiries into the Russian broadcaster’s output.

It said one dated to December 2017, when it announced it would look into suspicious tweets screened on Salmond’s show on 16 November, which included interviews with the ousted Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, the Tory MP Crispin Blunt and the Labour peer Helena Kennedy.

Ofcom states:

We already had one open investigation relating to ‘audience tweets’ in the Alex Salmond Show, which we have provisionally found were not from audience members. One of the suspicious tweets appeared to be from the series director of Salmond’s programme producers, Luisa St John.

Ben Nimmo, an expert in Russian propaganda with the Atlantic Council’s digital forensic research lab and a former Nato press officer, said the number of new cases was very significant, although it remained to be seen whether all seven would be proven. He said: