A network of Russian accounts has been spreading disinformation on war in Ukraine for months. the NGO EU DisinfoLab has exposed a campaign of influence and handling policy that has supplanted the identity of up to 17 large media to mislead readers with falsehood-ridden articles, videos, and surveys. These contents were later amplified through ‘fake’ accounts on Facebook and Twitter.
This propaganda campaign coordinated from Russia was activated in May of this year to promote the narrative of the kremlin about his military invasion of Ukraine and to destabilize public opinion of his rivals. Thus, these “clones” posing as legitimate means repeated the usual false accusations of the Government of Vladimir Putin like that Ukraine is a Nazi country or conspiracies like that massacres of civilians like Bucha’s are a setup.
#DOPPELGANGER: How Russia-based actors cloned legitimate media outlets from multiple countries (????????????) to spread disinformation designed to undermine the support for Ukraine.
Our last investigation: https://t.co/yaeAEBHdWY
— EU DisinfoLab (@DisinfoEU) September 27, 2022
The investigation indicates that this operation bought web domains with names very similar to the media outlets for which they passed themselves off and mimicked the design of those pages to fine-tune their ability to cheated. This is a common method of disinformation campaigns, an opaque industry that is estimated to move more than 60,000 million dollars. Coordinated accounts on Facebook and Twitter operated as a loudspeaker to get these lies to more people. Thus, there are those who read Russian hoaxes thinking that they were rigorous and verified journalistic articles.
“Continuing Threat”
This disinformation campaign, already uncovered at the end of August by the German media T Mobile, put the big media outlets in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Ukraine and Latvia in the spotlight. Among them are ‘The Guardian’, ’20 minutes’, ‘Ansa’ or ‘Bild’, the best-selling newspaper in Europe. The investigation has not detected that this maneuver affected the Spanish media.
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EU DisinfoLab does not attribute this coordinated operation to a specific actor, but notes that “many elements point to the participation of actors based in Russia.” Following their trail on the internet, they point out that both the purchase of spoofed web domains and the production of the broadcast propaganda videos have been carried out from that country. Even so, the NGO adds that “we cannot totally exclude the possibility of a false flag operation.” That campaign of manipulation is still active, making it a “continuing threat”.
The authors of the investigation ask the authorities to act to stop this type of attack. “The mere fact that the operation is still going on after months of violating European data privacy and property laws using EU-based servers and software, likely without consequences for its perpetrators, is worrying,” Alexandre said. Alaphilippe, Executive Director of EU DisinfoLab.