User:Aratano/Operation Doppelganger

Operation Doppelganger (evil twin) is an ongoing Russian disinformation operation targeting certain Western countries. This operation is part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a component of the war being waged against Ukraine.

Methods
The method used for this disinformation operation consists in creating digital twins that graphically imitate major media outlets or organizations in the targeted country. These digital twins are hosted on domain names that use the typosquatting technique to ensnare the average Internet user. French anti-disinformation agency VIGINUM listed 355 domain names impersonating French media outlets.

For France, the imitated websites are those of Le Monde, 20 minutes, Le Figaro and Le Parisien, as well as the website of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For Germany, the targeted sites are those of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel, Bild and Die Welt .

Italy, the United Kingdom (with The Guardian ) and Ukraine are also target countries of this operation.

In each of the imitated media websites, around twenty propaganda articles criticize the West and the war in Ukraine. These articles are then posted on social networks to achieve a certain level of virality. Russian embassies and cultural centers officially relay these propaganda articles.

Many fake accounts are created on Facebook and Twitter to relay them.

The campaign was revealed in September 2022 by EU DisinfoLab, which names it Operation Doppelganger.

In France the campaign was detected by anti-disinformation agency VIGINUM which highlights the responsibility of Russian-speaking individuals and Russian companies.

In addition to typosquatted media websites, Russian propaganda publishes French-language websites with French-sounding names such as Notre pays or La Virgule to relay false articles on the political news of European countries.

Goals
The aim is to serve the Kremlin's narrative, primarily to weaken Western support for Ukraine. The narrative favours four themes:


 * sanctions against Russia are inefficient
 * Westerners are russophobic
 * the Ukrainian army is barbaric and made up of neo-Nazis
 * Ukrainian refugees are a burden on European countries.

The second goal for the propaganda articles is to be quoted and picked up by Russian media in order to reach the Russian population through the alternative reality that Russian power is trying to maintain about the war in Ukraine.

In French-speaking Africa, the aim is to serve Russian interests and conduct an anti-French campaign supporting narratives of coups d'etat in the targeted countries. .

Operation progress
Initially in 2002, the main targets of the operation were major German medias. The European NGO EU DisinfoLab, which uncovered this interference operation, named the operation Doppelgänger in September 2022.

The Doppelganger disinformation operation was confirmed by Meta. In December 2022, Meta identified two Russian companies, ASP and Struktura, and thought it had put an end to the operation.

The operation continued, targeting new countries: France, Italy and the United Kingdom. On June 13, 2023, the French Foreign Ministry denounced the operation to Russia. France accused Russia directly, stating that these operations were part of hybrid warfare. In an official statement, Catherine Colonna said that "the French authorities have uncovered the existence of a digital campaign to manipulate information against France involving Russian actors and in which state entities or entities affiliated to the Russian state have participated by amplifying false information". She also specified that a link was being established with allied countries to "defeat Russia's hybrid war".

Despite its discovery and denunciation, Operation Doppelganger continued. In August 2003, Meta's security report stated that Doppelganger was targeting a new country: the United States. In the summer of 2023, Russian services copied the websites of Fox News Channel, The Washington Post and the NATO website.

In August 2023, the website of French newspaper Liberation was copied by Russian actors to create fake websites hosted on domains liberation.ltd and liberation.wf. The VIGINUM service detected the fraud and warned the French daily newspaper.

In October 2023, fake anti-Zelensky advertisements and fake graffiti were proliferating in pro-Russian publications. These elements had been part of the pro-Russian paraphernalia for several months. They were intended to ridicule the Ukrainian cause in the West and to induce lassitude in European and American public opinions. According to these publications, street artists in France and Germany had painted murals depicting Zelensky as a cannibal. Other forgeries had been identified, such as a fake prize competition impersonating French travel agency Promovacances featuring Ukrainian soldiers killed in action. These elements were then picked up by fake Western news sites, which were in turn relayed by real Russian media.

Since October 25, 2023, the operation had taken a new turn, with fake articles using the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to discredit Western countries. The underlying idea was to make people believe that support for Israel would replace support for Ukraine, and the latter would gradually be abandoned. The fake articles appeared in Russian, Ukrainian, English, German and Hebrew, and were relayed by bots on Twitter.

At the end of October 2023, stenciled blue Stars of David were discovered on street walls in Paris and its suburbs. The act, immediately described as anti-Semitic, was widely denounced as reminiscent of the Stars of David painted by the Nazis on Jewish-owned businesses. After a few days and the arrest of a Moldavian couple suspected of tagging the stars at the request of Anatoliï Prizenko, a pro-Kremlin Moldavian businessman, a Russian influence operation was suspected.

On November 9, 2023, France issues an official statement condemning the involvement of the Doppelganger network. Numerous accounts, attributed "with a high degree of trust" to the Doppelganger network, were the first to publish online photographs of the stenciled Stars of David, and were instrumental in artificially ampligying their spread on social networks.

Sanctions
At the end of July 2023, the Council of the European Union sanctioned five entities whose assets are frozen: the technology companies Social Design Agency and Structura National Technologies, the Inforos agency, the Institute for the Russian Diaspora and the NGO Dialog. Seven people linked to these entities were also banned from entering European territory.

Related articles

 * Russia–Ukraine relations
 * 2022 Ukraine cyberattacks
 * Protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
 * Reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
 * Disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Notes and references
