Did you see the German woman complaining on social media that her country’s industry is suffering and needs cheaper energy? Or the American woman of the same age arguing that Israel and Ukraine are wasting US taxpayer’s money?
Both were crafted in Russia, according to a huge trove of documents leaked to Western media in September, and published by the VSquare investigative site among others. They were just two of 33.9 million social media comments fabricated by the Social Design Agency (SDA), a Kremlin disinformation subcontractor, in the first third of 2024 alone.
If anyone thought wartime Russia might lose focus in its truth-twisting campaigns against Ukraine and the liberal democratic states, think again. Putin and his aides still see disinformation as a key element of the colonial endeavor against Ukraine and the embitterment and fractiousness of Western voters.
Faced with international sanctions, military setbacks, significant losses, and growing isolation, Russia has increasingly ramped up its disinformation operations, political subversion, and the manipulation of public opinion in the West — echoing the KGB’s tactics of psychological warfare and subversion.
It’s cheap and it works. “Public opinion in the project’s target countries is gradually moving towards reducing or completely stopping support for Ukraine,” a Russian disinformation executive wrote in one of the leaked emails. The comment may be self-serving (as with any employee eager to highlight their metrics and perhaps win an end of year bonus) but it contains some truth.
The SDA is one of several shadowy organizations responsible for generating relentless waves of fake news, memes, and social media manipulation to sow division, and is reminiscent of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency (IRA.) Like the IRA, the SDA operates on a global scale, tailoring its tactics to fit each country’s domestic landscape and exploiting societal vulnerabilities such as economic hardship, migration concerns, and cultural issues.
According to the leak, the SDA operates as a “center for psychological warfare,” for which purpose it employs meme creators, internet trolls and “ideologists,” commentators, and a “bot farm operator.”
It is eager to expand. In a document titled “Information Operations Project Office Baltics,” the SDA proposed establishing a center in Kaliningrad to target the Baltic states, Poland, and Germany. The document highlights that: “Thanks to its geographical location and historical cultural ties with Europe, Kaliningrad Oblast is the most convenient springboard for organizing and conducting information operations in EU countries.”
The key to Russian tactics is the focus on groups that can damage societal consensus on a issues like Ukraine and Russia. Assisting the continuing rise of far-right parties, such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and France’s National Rally, are key goals for the SDA. The leaked documents reveal how Russian disinformation campaigns have tailored their messaging to prop up these parties and resonate with the concerns of their constituencies — specifically, economic anxieties, anti-immigration sentiment, and skepticism toward the EU.
Europe’s right doesn’t always play ball, one SDA document notes, referencing Italian premier Giorgia Meloni’s pro-Ukraine stance and some sympathetic words for President Zelenskyy from Marine Le Pen.
But it adds that: “The general success of the far-right in the European Parliament elections is perceived globally as a success for Russian foreign policy and, moreover, for Russian propaganda.”
The SDA is just one cog in Russia’s sprawling disinformation machine. Another Russian influence operation, exposed earlier this year, targeted Europe ahead of the European Parliament elections. Orchestrated by the Ukrainian fugitive Viktor Medvedchuk, a close Putin ally based in Russia, the operation created the now-defunct platform Voice of Europe to spread pro-Kremlin disinformation and promote anti-Western sentiment.
Czech authorities shut down the operation, uncovering covert funding of politicians aligned with Russia’s strategic goals. Artem Marchevskyi, its alleged head, has denied any responsibility and has reportedly been offered refuge in Slovakia.
In Moldova meanwhile, customs officers in Chișinău recently intercepted €900,000 ($980,000) in undeclared cash smuggled in by over 100 Russians arriving from Russia via Armenia. This money, allegedly linked to a Kremlin-backed oligarch, was intended to fund protests and buy votes ahead of Moldova’s presidential election in October, a critical moment for the country’s pro-EU government.
Vote-buying efforts have been underway in the country for some time, with civil servants and pensioners in one traditionally pro-Russian region receiving substantial individual payments direct from a Kremlin-linked bank.
Like Ukraine, Moldova has served as a testing ground of Russia’s broader destabilization efforts. The Kremlin views Moldova as a strategic battleground in its campaign to keep states, once occupied by the Soviet Union, within its sphere of influence and prevent alignment with the West. Moldova says the Kremlin has been funneling money to leading pro-Russian figures like the fugitive Moldovan businessman Ilan Șor, to derail its democratic and EU ambitions. A vote to embed the goal of EU membership in the constitution will be held on October 20, along with the presidential ballot.
Of course, Russia’s main effort this year is focused on the US presidential election. According to an FBI affidavit in September, a Russian scheme called The Good Old USA Project has targeting voters in six swing states. One of the project’s main messages, was “that the US should target their effort towards addressing its domestic issues instead of wasting money in Ukraine and other ‘problem’ regions.” Identical narratives emerged with the mass disinformation swirling around the recent hurricanes that caused destruction in Florida, North Carolina, and several other states.
A US Department of Justice indictment in September shed further light on the role of media outlet RT, a propaganda arm of Russia’s intelligence services, in executing disinformation operations. The scheme involved covertly funneling nearly $10m to a Tennessee-based content creation company to produce and disseminate pro-Russian propaganda through US far-right influencers. This operation masqueraded as legitimate content, used platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, podcasts, and YouTube to disseminate strategic Kremlin propaganda, including an attempt to blame Ukraine for a terrorist attack in Moscow in March, and to sow division and amplify domestic discord ahead of election.
Russia, along with China and Iran, has also exploited AI to increase its disinformation operations. Earlier this year, an NSA official warned that hackers and propagandists worldwide were increasingly leveraging generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT to communicate with potential victims. Leaked documents revealed that the National Security Agency has identified a rising trend in the use of AI-generated content by Russian disinformation operatives.
Another increasing tactic employed by Russian intelligence is the Doppelganger operation, first identified by researchers at EU DisinfoLab in 2022. Doppelganger disseminates disinformation through a network of cloned websites, fake articles, and social media manipulation. In September, the US Department of Justice announced it had disrupted part of this operation, which has evolved to impersonate a wider range of credible entities beyond traditional news outlets, including government agencies and security organizations.
Russia has also continued escalating its sabotage operations across Europe, aiming to sow chaos and instill fear to further destabilize Western democracies.
Holding Russia’s Western and undercover enablers accountable is critical to dismantling these networks. The implications of inaction are profound and the resilience of Western democracies hinges on our ability to confront and counteract the relentless onslaught of Russian disinformation and malign influence operations.
Olga Lautman is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), the host of the Kremlin File podcast , and an analyst/researcher focusing on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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