Truth is the first casualty of war, as the old saying goes, and in the information age this adage has never rung truer.
In November, Poland’s government launched a public campaign highlighting the dangers of online disinformation and fake news. A deputy digital affairs minister described it as a direct threat to “social stability and democratic order.”
Experts widely agree that much of this threat originates from Russia.
“In Russia, disinformation has been elevated to a weapon used for political strategies,” a report by the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) says.
The prevalence of Russian disinformation spiked following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though it is far from a new phenomenon. For decades, Russia—and before it, the Soviet Union—has deployed dezinformatsiya as a strategic tool. In the lead-up to the Ukraine war, Moscow intensified these efforts.
Olga Lautman, a Russia specialist at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes disinformation as a cornerstone of Russian intelligence operations.
“The motives haven’t changed since Soviet times,” Lautman told TVP World. “They push narratives of Russia’s greatness and aim to sow division in the West.”
Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Moscow’s information warfare has reached new levels of sophistication. A report by Poland’s FakeHunter service reveals that Russia has cultivated a sprawling “propaganda ecosystem,” supported by troll farms and fake news networks.
In 2020, the U.S. State Department called this ecosystem a “media web” designed to manipulate global narratives.
Earlier this year, leaked U.S. intelligence warned of global actors, including Russia, China and Iran, increasingly using generative AI to target their messages.
Russia’s social influence efforts are impressive not only in their sophistication, but also in their scale. A vast trove of documents leaked to Western media in September shed light on the phenomenon’s extent.
Many of the documents related to an organization called the Social Design Agency (SDA), described by CEPA as a “Kremlin disinformation subcontractor.” The evidence revealed the agency had been responsible for as many as 33.9 million fabricated social media comments in the first four months of 2024 alone.
Central European investigative site VSquare, which had access to the thousands of leaked files from the SDA’s servers, said the agency “operates as a center for psychological warfare.”
“Its ‘army’ consists not of soldiers, but of meme creators and internet trolls,” VSquare wrote. “According to internal records, the agency employs ‘ideologists,’ eight ‘commentators’ and a ‘bot farm operator.’”
The data further revealed that the SDA bot operation, dubbed the ‘Russian Digital Army’ had produced 39,899 ‘content units’ on social media, including 4,641 videos and 2,516 memes and graphics, in just the first third of this year, VSquare said.
Radio Free Europe reported that a meme denigrating Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that was shared on X by owner Elon Musk and garnered over 86,000 shares, was a creation of the SDA.
Experts widely agree that much of this threat originates from Russia.
“In Russia, disinformation has been elevated to a weapon used for political strategies,” a report by the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) says.
The prevalence of Russian disinformation spiked following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though it is far from a new phenomenon. For decades, Russia—and before it, the Soviet Union—has deployed dezinformatsiya as a strategic tool. In the lead-up to the Ukraine war, Moscow intensified these efforts.
Old tactics, new tools
Olga Lautman, a Russia specialist at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes disinformation as a cornerstone of Russian intelligence operations.
“The motives haven’t changed since Soviet times,” Lautman told TVP World. “They push narratives of Russia’s greatness and aim to sow division in the West.”
Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Moscow’s information warfare has reached new levels of sophistication. A report by Poland’s FakeHunter service reveals that Russia has cultivated a sprawling “propaganda ecosystem,” supported by troll farms and fake news networks.
In 2020, the U.S. State Department called this ecosystem a “media web” designed to manipulate global narratives.
Earlier this year, leaked U.S. intelligence warned of global actors, including Russia, China and Iran, increasingly using generative AI to target their messages.
A photo is being shared on social networks of allegedly Ukrainian soldiers from the Special Operations Forces posing with a swastika flag. Several programs for analyzing the image authenticity indicate that a computer program modified this photo: https://t.co/WJmgTFiz1A pic.twitter.com/Lm3JEWZ8xE
— Stop Fake (@StopFakingNews) July 17, 2024
A sophisticated propaganda machine
Russia’s social influence efforts are impressive not only in their sophistication, but also in their scale. A vast trove of documents leaked to Western media in September shed light on the phenomenon’s extent.
Many of the documents related to an organization called the Social Design Agency (SDA), described by CEPA as a “Kremlin disinformation subcontractor.” The evidence revealed the agency had been responsible for as many as 33.9 million fabricated social media comments in the first four months of 2024 alone.
Central European investigative site VSquare, which had access to the thousands of leaked files from the SDA’s servers, said the agency “operates as a center for psychological warfare.”
“Its ‘army’ consists not of soldiers, but of meme creators and internet trolls,” VSquare wrote. “According to internal records, the agency employs ‘ideologists,’ eight ‘commentators’ and a ‘bot farm operator.’”
The data further revealed that the SDA bot operation, dubbed the ‘Russian Digital Army’ had produced 39,899 ‘content units’ on social media, including 4,641 videos and 2,516 memes and graphics, in just the first third of this year, VSquare said.
Radio Free Europe reported that a meme denigrating Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that was shared on X by owner Elon Musk and garnered over 86,000 shares, was a creation of the SDA.
Doppelganger
Another SDA initiative, Doppelganger, targeted Western elections by creating cloned websites of major outlets like The Washington Post and Fox News. These sites published manipulated content, while fake social media accounts spread links to these fabricated stories.
Doppelganger was supervised by Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin official often referred to as Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, according to U.S. officials who seized 32 internet domains linked to the project in September.
Among Doppelganger’s declared priorities was influencing European Parliament elections as well as ballots to the Bundestag and White House.
Doppelganger was financed and coordinated by the Kremlin, Poland’s Center for Eastern Studies (OSW) reported, with “strictly defined objectives, rules of procedure, and performance evaluation.”
“These efforts have primarily sought to undermine support for Ukraine, promote Russia-friendly policies, and stoke internal tensions within Western countries,” the center said.
As part of the operation, the SDA and a collaborating company, Structura, “set up websites that imitated legitimate, well-established media outlets to publish manipulated and biased content,” the OSW reported.
Russian operatives also set up numerous fake social media accounts that “posted comments on social media platforms, mainly X and Meta, with links to domains imitating legitimate news sites that were set up earlier as part of the same operation.”
Social media as a weapon
The social media distribution model is particularly effective and has greatly accelerated the dissemination of false narratives, FakeHunter reports.
The verification service wrote that many social media users are unaware that by sharing on X the slogan #tonienaszawojna (NotOurWar) – popular in some circles in Poland – they are “implementing the war plans of Kremlin strategists.”
“Meanwhile, even unaware ‘useful idiots’ work hand in hand with Russian propagandists,” the report states. “Indeed, according to Twitter’s [sic] algorithm, they provided the lie with enormous reach: each ‘like’ of a tweet means a thirty-fold increase of its visibility, and a retweet a twenty-fold increase.”
And X is one of Moscow’s favorite distribution channels, Olga Lautman told TVP World.
“They bought Elon Musk,” she said. “He frankly turned Twitter into a Russian disinformation lab amplifying all the disinformation.”
Again, the scale of the operation is enormous, with the Polish Institute for International Affairs reporting that Russian troll farms are responsible for more than 1,300 texts and 37,000 comments on Ukrainian social media per week.
In early 2024, authorities in Germany identified over 50,000 inauthentic accounts run by bots and sending thousands of messages a day echoing pro-Russian themes.
Olga Lautman argues that the threat from disinformation should be seen on a par with conventional attacks.
"Russia cannot fight a kinetic war,” she said. “Ukraine has shown us Russia's military capabilities...The impact from disinformation is way more dangerous than if there was actually a kinetic attack."
A growing threat
As the Ukraine conflict approaches a possible conclusion, analysts fear an escalation in Russian disinformation ahead of peace talks.
But despite the threat, Western responses remain inconsistent. “Russia operates disinformation campaigns 24/7,” Lautman said. “Unfortunately, they are winning, and the West has yet to get a grip.”
But she added that Eastern European nations like Poland and the Baltics are leading efforts to combat these campaigns, while the U.S. lags behind.
“The US is not doing anything,” she said. “But Europe has started taking measures, finally putting in safeguards when it comes to social media and the internet.
“Poland, the Baltics, Moldova… understand what needs to be done. Western European countries and the U.S. really need to start listening to Eastern European countries more because the dynamic has shifted.
“Eastern European countries have been warning about the threat Russia poses on every level…”
The fight against fake news
The Polish Institute for International Affairs suggests combating disinformation requires action from tech companies, governments and civil society.
Recommendations include dismantling financial incentives for fake news, improving detection tools and educating the public about misinformation.
Ultimately, the responsibility falls on individual users to verify sources and approach sensational content critically.
As a 2020 article in Rzeczpospolita advised: “Whenever information causes intense emotions, pause, verify sources, and question its authenticity. Awareness is key.”
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