EU Elections
A field ripe for Russian disinformation
During the past three days EU citizens have been voting for representatives who will act on their behalf in the European Parliament. This election is not just critical for Europeans, but also vital for Ukraine, because the amount of help Ukraine will receive to continue its efforts to repel Russian invaders this year will be determined by who will be elected.
This is almost certainly why Moscow has been devoting a lot of time and resources to disinformation efforts in Europe. They tried to bribe European Parliament members (link in Ukrainian). The lead candidate from Germany’s populist party Alternative for Germany—known for opposing military help to Ukraine and advocating for lifting sanctions imposed on Russia—Maximilian Krah was questioned by the FBI when he visited New York in December 2023, suspected of taking money from Kremlin agents.
Russia also expended a lot of effort trying to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Europeans by spreading disinformation. The EU in May sanctioned Viktor Medvedchuk and his associate Artem Marchevskyi for managing the online portal “Voice of Europe,” which spread propaganda and lies to advance Russia’s narrative in Europe and influence European elections.
You think Russia wanted to negotiate, but the United States, the West, and Ukraine are being intransigent.
False: Russian forces have been working to seize more and more Ukrainian territory, while bombing civilian infrastructure. That shows no willingness to negotiate of any kind, but rather a desire to illegally grab more land.
Putin recently started making noises about a negotiated ceasefire, but demanded that said ceasefire recognize the current battlelines, meaning that he wants Russia to keep the land it has stolen and illegally annexed in Ukraine. But before the current insistences, the Russians made a bunch of unreasonable demands, including that Ukraine never join NATO, and that the world recognize the territories they had stolen, including Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
That’s not a negotiation. Russia invaded its neighbor. Russia murdered and tortured its people. Russia stole its children and committed atrocities that cannot adequately be described in words. Russia stole Ukrainian land. And Russia is demanding that its crimes be legitimized before it stops committing more atrocities? Nope.
At one point, in October 2022, the Kremlin was pushing for a temporary ceasefire. Why? According to multiple sources close to the Russian government, Putin wanted to buy time for training conscripts and replenishing supplies.
You think Russia was never engaged in “forced deportation or forced separation” of Ukrainian children and families, and it is a “personal order from Vladimir Putin” to promote family reunification?
False: Thousands of children have been deported to Russia, and only 400 have been returned. In addition, Moscow forces parents in regions of Ukraine it has illegally annexed to register newborns as Russian, under threat of having their parental rights taken away. Oh, and let’s not forget that both Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for “Children’s Rights” Maria Lvova-Belova are already under International Criminal Court warrants for stealing Ukrainian kids—war crimes.
Have you fallen for the narrative that it was Ukrainian forces that attacked the train station at Kramatorsk in April 2022 to force civilians to remain in the conflict zone and use them as human shields?
Garbage: Russian forces attacked the train station using a “Tochka-U” close range ballistic missile, despite claiming that they no longer use these types of missiles and killing over 50 civilians waiting to evacuate. Russian social media channels initially bragged about the strike, claiming to have hit Ukrainian “militants,” though these posts were later deleted.
You think that Russia is only targeting Ukrainian military targets?
False: This is a particularly odious lie. Fact is that Russians bombed a theater in Mariupol, where the desperate citizens hid Ukrainian children, and denoted their presence on the ground in front of the theater in huge letters, hoping that the Russians would spare the little ones. They did not.
Are you still screaming that the attack on Ukraine was all NATO’s fault because it promised Russia not to expand after the Cold War?
False: This is a particularly fun one, because there’s not a single document that supports this contention, and even former Russian President Gorbachev debunked this claim in a 2010 interview. I will note that the interviewer made this assumption and attempted to assert it to Gorbachev as fact.
RBTH: One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: “NATO will not move one inch further east.”
M.G.: The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a singe Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context. Kohl and [German Vice Chancellor Hans-Dietrich] Genscher talked about it.
Do you believe Putin when he claims that sanctions on Russia have triggered a global economic crisis?
Put down the Kool-Aid. The IMF confirmed that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, not Western sanctions, has been the single most important factor driving global economic problems. The invasion has further driven up the costs of food and energy worldwide after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to EU estimates.
Are you convinced that Putin is the great liberator in this invasion and that his only goal is to free the Ukrainian people?
Unless you somehow believe that deliberately bombing Ukrainian hospitals, maternity wards, and other civilian healthcare facilities is the same as liberation, sit down.
There are numerous other lies witting and unwittling Kremlin agents have been spreading in Europe in hopes of electing Russia-friendly representatives.
The EU last month finally imposed sanctions on “Voice of Europe” and two businessmen connected to it after Czechia imposed unilateral sanctions on the “news” outlet accused of spreading Russian propaganda. Viktor Medvedchuk and Artem Marchevskyi were hit with asset freezes and travel bans for managing the Voice of Europe disinformation network, but the slime has spread far beyond these two.
Say hello to John Mark Dougan who has defected to Russia and who runs more than 150 fake local news websites pushing Russian propaganda to US audiences. That’s right. An EX-Marine and former US law enforcement officer, Dougan ran away to Moscow in 2016.
Dougan, a former Marine and police officer, fled his home in Florida in 2016 to evade criminal charges related to a massive doxxing campaign he was accused of launching against public officials and was given asylum by the Russian government. Most recently, Dougan has posed as a journalist in Ukraine’s Donbas region, testifying at Russian public hearings and making frequent appearances on Russian state TV.
Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub published a 29-page report late last year that described Russia’s narrative laundering. This may be a new concept, so let me explain.
There are three stages to money laundering: placement, layering, and integration.
During the placement stage, profits from illegal activities are introduced, or placed, into the financial system. After being deposited, the funds are moved around to put layers of transactions between its illicit origins and final destination. In the integration stage, “clean” funds are then used to make investments, purchases, etc.
Narrative laundering is no different.
The first stage is placement, the initial posting of the false information. Recent campaigns… have relied on inauthentic social media accounts for this purpose. Following placement is layering, the spread of that information from its origin to more credible sources. Repetition of a narrative itself brings a perception of credibility, and so this process has also been engaged in by employing both authentic and inauthentic social media accounts. The final stage is integration. This is the point at which the information becomes endorsed by more credible and genuine sources and is widely disseminated by real users.
Clemson’s report exposes Dougan as being behind several, what I like to call “sleeper” websites that all of a sudden became active relatively recently. I call them sleepers because they’re much similar to the TV show “The Americans” in which Russian agents infiltrate U.S. society using fake identities of dead people and work to advance Russia’s interests from within, while pretending to be regular people going about their lives.
For example, a website called DC Weekly which sounds like a legitimate news source and has been in existence for more than 20 years.
…the domain was inactive in late 2018 and did not reappear until April 2021, when the current website began operating (with a different WordPress skin but with the same stories). At its relaunch in 2021, the dcweekly.org domain pointed to an IP address that was shared with many other unusual domains, all of which are affiliated with John Mark Dougan, a former police officer and conspiracy theorist who fled to Russia in 2016 and has since reinvented himself as an independent pro-Russian journalist in Donbass covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These included his own personal website (badvolf.com), its Russian version (badvolf.ru), a gossip website related to Dougan’s time in the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office (PBSOTalk.org), the website for the "Syndicate of Independent International Journalists", two websites marketing Dougan’s books(Leaveukrainewar.com and botbook.us), two ”news“ sites (Worldnewsdesk.press and Newsdesk.press), and asecurity firm (Falcon Eye Tech) that offers “off-shore security monitoring services.” Some of these websites arenow defunct, while others have moved to Cloudflare (as has DC Weekly). An early “Whois” record also listed “Mark Dugan” as the owner of the dcweekly.org domain. There are two other connections between DC Weekly and Falcon Eye Tech. First, they share an SSL certificate for https encryption. Second, they are both built on a Wordpress blog technology stack, with a first author named “Devlin.”
The Clemson report uncovered numerous instances of narrative laundering linked to Dougan, including the ridiculous assertion that Ukraine’s First Lady bought more than a million dollars’ worth of jewelry at Cartier in New York, while her husband was speaking at the United Nations. People spreading this disinformation suggested that this money was likely siphoned from Western aid to Ukraine.
Initial placement of this narrative occurred using an online video of a Black woman with a West African accent recounting her purported experience as a former Cartier employee. In the video the individual claimed to have been an intern who assisted Zelenska with her purchase. She describes how Zelenska became angry with her service and insisted that she be fired. The day after Zelenska’s visit the supposed intern claimed she was dismissed, but as she left, she took with her a copy of Zelenska’s receipt for $1.1 million. The receipt appeared briefly on the video (long enough for a clear screen capture to be made), supporting the individual’s claim. The video reportedly originated from the intern’s Instagram account… but this page was set to private at the time of the story spreading. The video was instead shared via YouTube where it was posted by an account on September 30, 2023. While this YouTube account joined the platform in 2020, the Zelenska-Cartier video was its only post.
The narratives then moved to Africa-based sites, appearing on a French language news page based in Burkina Faso and then other news sites in Africa, including Nigeria and Ghana, putting more distance between the origin of the lie and the news sources picking up the story and giving it a veneer of legitimacy.
Russian news sources then picked up the fake story, including smaller sites like Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and then more prominent sources such as RT, all referencing Nigeria’s The Nation as the original source. Other dodgy Russian “influencers” picked up the story and ran with it, and then those with an already biased view about Ukraine and our aid to the country started spreading the disinformation. Dougan’s DC Weekly also picked up the story, claiming that a journalist named Jessica Devlin (see above), who supposedly had recently joined DC Weekly as a “Senior Political Correspondent,” had written the piece.
Jessica Devlin’s lengthy biography describes her as a “distinguished and highly acclaimed journalist whose career has taken her to some of the most critical and challenging regions of the world.” An extensive search found no record of Jessica Devlin’s acclaim, however, or, indeed, a record of any journalist by that name outside of DC Weekly. Her profile image is, in fact, a headshot belonging to Judy Batalion, a genuinely acclaimed writer in her own right and author of a New York Time’s best-selling novel.
Another fake story appeared in European press (read: Dougan’s site The London Crier) recently, claiming that Zelensky spent 20 million pounds on a mansion previously owned by King Charles. The story appeared after DC Weekly claimed that Zelensky also purchased two yachts with US aid money. Where do the JD Vances and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world get their ridiculous contentions? Many times from Dougan’s websites.
Both the mansion and the yacht rumors relied on videos posted on YouTube by newly created accounts, much like the Zelenska-Cartier story. Sites such as DC Weekly will publish these ridiculous stories using videos of seemingly AI-generated “leaks,” and Russian influencers and bot networks will spread the lies, according to Clemson researchers. Ultimately, the fake articles are reported as fact by pro-Kremlin media outlets and, in some of the most successful cases, by Western politicians and pundits.
Voila! Narrative laundering!
DC Weekly and other sites linked to Dougan followed similar procedures for other stories, according to Clemson researchers.
Dougan’s stable of disinformation outlets are by far not the only entities working to spread lies throughout the United States and Europe. Going back to recent EU sanctions against “Voice of Europe,” the bloc accused the outlet of “gravely distorting and manipulating facts in order to justify and support Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.”
In particular, the Council imposed restrictive measures on "Voice of Europe", an online media outlet which has engaged in a systematic, international campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts to destabilise Ukraine, the EU and its member states. Furthermore, Voice of Europe runs a website - with accounts promoting it on social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and X - actively spreading disinformation related to Ukraine and promoting pro-Kremlin false narratives about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, Voice of Europe has been used as a vehicle for funneling of financial resources designated for remuneration of propagandists, and for building a network influencing representatives of political parties in Europe.
Whether these Russian stooges are successful in gaining supporters in the European Parliament remains to be seen. One thing is clear, however, enhanced due diligence on any story that appears to exist merely to support certain narratives and any outlet running it is a must.
So, business as usual for the Russians, harkens back to the old USSR days...