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• A widespread Russian-linked network, ‘Pravda’ and ‘Portal Kombat’ operates hundreds of websites globally, mimicking local news outlets to amplify pro-Kremlin narratives. Using certain domain naming conventions - e.g., pravda-fr. com, pravda-de. com, serbia.news-pravda. com - the network also includes a particularly large and coordinated subset referred to as ‘Portal Kombat’.

• This network generates significant political and security risks by disseminating disinformation and potentially compromising open-source intelligence (OSINT) gathering and Artificial Intelligence (AI) training datasets.

• The network will likely persist and increasingly leverage AI, evolving into more sophisticated automated Information Operations (IO) tactics that will likely challenge global information integrity and AI safety in the long term.

• The Pravda ecosystem encompasses hundreds of news websites with over 3.7m published articles, meticulously designed to mimic the content of legitimate local news portals across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key European countries targeted by the Pravda network include France, Germany, Ukraine, Moldova and Serbia.

In addition to that, the UK Defence Journal reports of a new wave of Russian disinformation blogs. “Over the past year, there has been a marked rise in pro-Russian content proliferating on platforms such as Substack and personal blogs, predominantly authored by figures within the UK and Europe”, a report says.

“This new wave of pro-Russian blogs is not a spontaneous movement. The consistent themes, high output frequency, AI-generated text, and strategic language switching all point to a coordinated effort. Whether motivated by ideology, financial incentives, or direct influence from pro-Kremlin networks, these bloggers are contributing to a broader strategy of information warfare.”