Russian Disinformation

On 27 September, Meta released a Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) report describing the take down of what the company deems covert influence operations from China and Russia, which are essentially disinformation campaigns. On the Russian campaign, over 1,633 accounts spent around $105,000 to spread anti-Ukraine propaganda and created over 60 fake websites of European media outlets. Meta claims their automated system caught most of the activity and through their own investigation, and with assistance from researchers, discovered that attention to detail was used when the threat actors created the fake websites. However, the threat actors approached the social media portion to spread the disinformation with much less care—largely promoting the fake websites with high volumes of posts that followed no real logic.

While the disinformation campaign and content of it is nothing new for Russia, the social media approach described by Meta may signal a hasty and disorganized effort by Russia that coincides with their losses on the battlefield. It is likely that Russia attempted to use the most recent campaign to counter news of Ukrainian forces reclaiming territory that Russia once controlled and declared annexed. The fake websites may have been created to serve a larger purpose, but then used quickly in response to ongoing military events. We assess that Russia will continue to use disinformation campaigns as part of their hybrid warfare approach to Ukraine.