Sep 5, 2024
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government on Wednesday indicted two Russian citizens and seized more than 30 internet domains related to a campaign to influence the American election.
But the trove of information filed in court by the FBI also revealed another bombshell: A Russian operation to manipulate German, French, Italian and U.K. politicians, businesspeople, journalists and other influencers.
The goal of the Kremlin’s campaign in Europe was to sow division, discredit America and undermine support for Ukraine, according to a host of Russian documents, memos and minutes from Russian psychological warfare meetings.
The documents were obtained by the FBI and filed in a court affidavit as part of Wednesday’s indictments. The 277-page dossier details Russian plans to win over Europeans’ hearts and minds.
One memo from Russia’s “Social Design Agency” described a plan to target people via real posts and comments on social media to circumvent social media companies’ bot filters.
The Social Design Agency acts under the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff Sergey Kiriyenko, according to the FBI court affidavit.
The Russian document says the goal of the campaign is to “evoke in the audience rational (such as, ‘really, why do WE need to help Ukraine?’) and emotional (such as, ‘Americans are such scumbags!’) reactions.”
The psy-ops also relied on so-called doppelgänger domains to spread fake articles and content made to look like they came from Western media outlets.
The domains included fakes of Reuters, Der Spiegel, Bild, Le Monde, Le Parisien, Welt, FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Delfi and others, and were paid for with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, according to the FBI affidavit.
The Russian psy-ops team identified Germany as a particularly vulnerable target for Russian influence.
“The Germans are more dependent than the French,” reads one of the Russian documents, presumably referring to Germany’s economic dependence on Russian gas and exports.
“First and foremost, we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain and NATO, and secondly,” convince Germans to oppose the “inefficient politics of sanctions,” the FBI quoted an internal Russian note as saying.
Another Social Design Agency document outlines an operation called “International Conflict Incitement” targeting specifically France and Germany.
Its objective: “To escalate internal tensions … in order to promote the interests of the Russian Federation,” as well as “to influence real-life conflicts and artificially create conflict situations” via fake articles, influencers, as well as targeted posts and comments on social media.
The Russian document added that the goal was to “destabilize the societal situation” in France and Germany by “spreading additional false narratives;” “fake videos, documents, and telephone conversation recordings;” “comments on social media;” and “fake and real quotes from influencers.”
…………………………
Here is the latest deranged threat to Britain:
“The goal of the Kremlin’s campaign in Europe was to sow division”
That’s what I’ve been saying forever. Only a fool or a vatnik would believe the Kremlinals support one side or the other…but we hear that drivel every day here.
The kremlin supports those in the west that are backing it to win: ie the coalition of far left/far right politicians, media figures, entertainers and business figures.
“The goal of the Kremlin’s campaign **in Europe** was to sow division”
The goal of the Kremlin’s campaign in the USA is to get putler’s puppet, donOLD trumpkov, back in the White House.
Did you not see all the recent articles about russia explicitly supporting trumpkov? Tenet Media? Dmitry Simes?
As it said in https://ukrainetoday.org/why-trump-and-putin-now-need-each-other-desperately/ :
“if you don’t realize that keeping Trump out of jail and giving Putin Ukraine and whatever else of Europe he wants on a silver platter are what all these stories are really about, well, you may be just the kind of clueless voter Trump is counting on.”
Sir RSM – here’s the latest American intelligence assessment of efforts to influence the US elections:
Russia poses the most active foreign influence threat to this year’s U.S. elections. They are trying to influence voter preferences in favor of the former President [trumpkov] and diminish the prospects of the Vice President [Kamala Harris].
Iran is making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections. They’re trying to hurt trumpkov. [Guess they’re still butt-hurt about General Soleimani.]
China is focused on influencing down-ballot races and is still not attempting to influence the presidential race.
Click to access ODNI-Election-Security-Update-20240906.pdf
[DNI is Director of National Intelligence]
Is that why Poopin endorsed Harris? This feeble, corrupt administration should never be listened to about foreign policy, they’re too weak and non-patriotic.
“Is that why Poopin endorsed Harris?”
Of course. I’ll remind you once again of your own words:
“And you don’t fundamentally understand what affect that has on the USA voters do you? If Bin Laden came out to support John Kerry do you think that would get John Kerry more votes in the US? You must, if you think a Vladolf endorsement would help”
As someone else recently commented:
Only a fool or a vatnik would believe that poopin endorsing Biden or Harris means that he really wants them to win.
“This […] administration should never be listened to about foreign policy”
What was quoted was the assessment of the US Intelligence community. It wasn’t from “the administration” and had nothing to do with foreign policy.
Before 2014, western support for ruZia came almost exclusively from far left tankies. But in 2008, the far right outed itself as putlerite; under the guise of the “alt-right”; a code term for Republicans for putler.
The alt-right has morphed into the much more powerful magaputler bloc; as represented by Tucker Carlson and all of the so far named members of the cabinet if the GOP Putin wing wins in November.
The tankies are still around though. Jill Stein, Jeffrey Sachs and RFK “Brainworm” Jr all speak as one with Ivan Muskovy, JD VanZkov and Moscow Marge when it comes to aggressive support for putler.
I thought “alt-right” was more aligned with white supremacists, although there’s certainly a great deal of overlap with the magaputler crowd.
In 2010, the American white nationalist Richard B. Spencer launched The Alternative Right webzine. His “alternative right” was shortened to “alt-right”. This is well before trumpkov and his MAGAts arrived on the scene.
It goes back at least to the savage attack on Georgia in 2008. Alex Jones a few years previously had described correctly putler as a “demon”.
Suddenly he went all in on putler. Some people think he’s a joke. But he is not, he’s evil and has a huge following. His favourite guests on his show are Alexandr Dugin and Trumpkov.
He has an insane British analogue: David Icke, who believes that putler is the saviour of the world and that Zel is the Antichrist.
I vividly remember us questioning the West’s willingness for having massive ruskie propaganda, fake, news, election interference, and pure lies permeate the free world without even trying to counter it. NOW the West is waking up after lots of damage has already been done. Clearly, the collective leaders in the free world are not worth the money they cost.