French authorities said Wednesday they had tracked nearly 80 disinformation campaigns led by Russian operators between August 2023 and early March 2025, mainly targeting Ukraine and its allies, including France.
The estimate by the French agency countering foreign online attacks, Viginum, said the campaign was “particularly… effective in distributing anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narratives to Western audiences”.
The so-called “Storm-1516” campaign uses artificial intelligence to create realistic profiles, pays amateur operators, and poses a “significant threat to the digital public debate, both in France and across all European countries,” the agency said.
“The European public debate is being pounded by disinformation campaigns conducted by Russian entities and relayed especially by the American far-right,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in a statement to AFP, adding that Russian entities had targeted the French legislative elections of 2024.
…
The Viginum report highlighted the role of American far-right influencers or pro-Russian influencers like Adrien Bocquet, a “former French soldier exiled in Russia”, who amplify the dissemination of false information.
Some of the false information – such as the alleged purchase by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of a former Nazi building in Germany or a luxury hotel in Courchevel – have been verified by AFP’s digital investigative team in articles available on AFP Factuel’s website (factuel.afp.com).
…
The disinformation-fighting organisation NewsGuard previously attributed to Storm-1516 a video supposedly showing a Chadian migrant confessing to raping a 12-year-old girl in France. Another, AI-generated video accused Brigitte Macron, the wife of President Emmanuel Macron, of sexual assault.
Ive seen these disinformation campaigns here on lemmy coming from .ml and hexbear primarily.
They have users on other instances too, cheering for populist goverments and pulling other lemmy users into their propaganda.
They don’t get paid, they do it out of conviction
How do you know?
They show a devotion comparable to religious sects. Those don’t work for money but because they are completely absorbed by their respective belief. :)
People being paid would try to be coherent
I’ve noticed for a while that any video from LeMonde (an influent French newspaper) that talks about war in Ukraine is flooded by negative feedback from profiles that all have the same name pattern (firstnameXXXX).
Attacks as in Infrastructure, Inject Political Opinions, Support of Oppositon Parties, Grassroot Anti-Goverment Citizen Movements, Micro Targeted Political Ads on Social Media, Political Killings inside other countries, Property Damage and Offshore Sabotage, etc. pp.
Germanys attacks on Russian:
Frances attacks on Russian:
Italys attacks on Russian:
Sweden attacks on Russian:
Spains attacks on Russian:
Finlands attacks on Russian:
Netherlands attacks on Russian:
Portugals attacks on Russian:
Greeks attacks on Russia:
Denmarks attacks on Russian:
–
Russian attacks on Germany: ██████████████████████████████
Russian attacks on France: ███████████████████████
Russian attacks on Italy: ███████████████████
Russian attacks on Sweden: ██████████████████████
Russian attacks on Spain: ████████████████
Russian attacks on Finland: ███████████████████████
Russian attacks on Netherland: █████████████████████████
Russian attacks on Portugal: █████████████████████
Russian attacks on Greek: █████████
Russian attacks on Denmark: ████████████████████████
“Fucking DUH” replied anyone with more that three active braincells.
Lemme guess, there’s also some form of connection between Moscow and all the undersea cables mysteriously disconnecting themselves…?
Pretty sure I read a similar headline a decade ago. Next to another decade old headline talking about politicians saying that something needs to be done about misinformation on Twitter and Facebook.
This would be today’s “no shit Sherlock” moment.
In other news, water is wet.
And yet, they wont do anything about it.
