German Foreign Ministry exposes Russian disinformation campaign in the X network
Kyiv • UNN
The German Foreign Ministry and the French government have exposed a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign that has spread more than a million false messages through fake accounts on X (Twitter). The operation aims to undermine support for Ukraine by spreading the narrative that aid to Ukraine neglects local citizens.
The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs has detected a systematic Russian disinformation campaign on Elon Musk's X (Twitter) short message platform: more than a million false messages per month. In particular, tens of thousands of fake user accounts have been detected, UNN reports with reference to Spiegel.
Details
Experts commissioned by the German Foreign Office analyzed the X network using specialized message monitoring software. They found a large network of fake users distributing German-language content: more than 50,000 fake user accounts that together published more than a million messages in German on X.
Among the recurring themes of their reports was the accusation that Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government was neglecting the people of his country in order to help Ukraine in its war against Russia.
This is what one of the fake accounts looked like:
The war in Ukraine will end in three months
The count is almost perfect. A common photo is used, and the number of followers is also accurate. But the message that questioned Germany's support for Kyiv was not absolutely perfect
In one corner, we recognized a sign in Cyrillic. We realized that the source of the fake account and false information was Russia. In a month, the Foreign Ministry services counted at least 50 thousand accounts and more than a million messages. The goal: to make people believe that Berlin no longer supports Ukraine, or, on the contrary, that this support is to the detriment of the Germans
Large-scale disinformation campaign
The identified accounts constantly link to fake news on websites created to look like real media outlets. Experts believe that their discovery is part of the Duplicate disinformation campaign attributed to Russia as part of its "hybrid war" against the West.
Operation Doppelganger, which became known back in 2022, is about usurping the visual identity of the media to spread false information.
Moscow's disinformation efforts exposed in Paris
The French government also accuses Russia of deliberately spreading false information about France in connection with the war in Ukraine. The country's defense ministry today reported a "coordinated Russian action" involving state media outlets such as sputnik news, rt and ria news.
It is noted that the indicator of Russia's disinformation campaign has increased since the middle of the month after President Emmanuel Macron warned of the importance of victory over Russia and announced new arms supplies to Ukraine.
Recall
NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov calls the allegations of foreign and local media about secret talks between Ukraine and Russia nonsense and disinformation.
