Haaretz reports that Russia is overseeing the Doppelganger global disinformation campaign to spread fake news. In particular, it says Russia creates almost exact copies of acclaimed world media platforms to publish articles that contain false or distorted information. At the moment, such pieces are aimed at inciting anti-Ukrainian and anti-Israel sentiments around the world.
The first evidence of Russia launching this massive disinformation campaign emerged in June of this year when French intelligence agencies discovered Russian bots operating in the French media space, citculating narratives of an anti-Semitic nature. Also, information of an anti-Ukrainian nature is systematically spread. Provocative content is generated using artificial intelligence and sent to hoax pages of world media websites. Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, Bild – this just part of the list of such resources on which Russians spread their disinformation.
It is noteworthy that the next large-scale release of fake stories came on October 8, the day after the Hamas attacked Israel. The effort expanded exponentially in the following days. Such fake reports played no small role in inciting anti-Israeli sentiment across the world. This is a classic example of how and why Russia employs website clones it has created, misleading the whole world.
The information meddling by the Russian Federation is a threat that must be addressed immediately. Clones of sites distributing Russian fake news must be taken off the web; the Russian information presence on Western soil is absolutely unacceptable in the conditions of open information terror on the part of the Russian Federation. Comprehensive efforts are needed to counter this threat as it is a matter of national security for Western democracies.