MATRIOSKA: The pro-Russian operation trying to manipulate fact-checkers around the world with fake alerts
A pro-Russian operation targeting fact-checkers around the world, including EFE Verifica, has been trying for months to manipulate the activity of major media outlets and teams specialising in the fight against disinformation with false warnings about hoaxes on social networks and requests for investigations.
Hundreds of media outlets, including corporations such as the BBC and CNN in the US, have been the target of these actions, especially those aimed at fact-checkers.
The campaign, dubbed ‘Operation Matryoshka’ by Antibot4Navalny, a group specialising in the analysis of Russia-related influence operations, has involved the creation of numerous X and email accounts used to question the veracity of different content.
The name of the operation refers to the traditional Russian dolls that contain smaller dolls inside.
UNIMPORTANT FALSE CLAIMS
These publications are indeed false, but they have a limited circulation and are not found outside the channels to which these messages refer.
They are not, therefore, viral content; it is the messages sent to the media themselves that give them relevance, without the fact-checkers being able to determine whether their origin is real.
Specifically, EFE’s verification service has regularly received around fifty requests to investigate text messages, photographs and videos, written in English and from addresses identified by Anglo-Saxon names, since the end of December 2023.
The battery of questions sent by email coincides in formula and content with those received on its official X account (@EFEVerifica) or with others sent to the profile of the whole of the EFE Agency (@EFEnoticias), inquiries that began in October.
DISTRACT AND EXAMINE
In addition to the investigations initiated by the verifiers concerned, different groups of analysts are examining the characteristics of these actions.
These experts agree that among the motivations of those responsible for this campaign seems to be the desire to divert the attention of the media consulted and to make them waste their time and resources on irrelevant investigations, as in the case of Antibot4Navalny, which attributes the strategy to pro-Russian actors.
The campaign is also the subject of a study by the Finnish digital research company Check First, which analyses its characteristics under the name ‘Operation Overload’.
Check First is supported in this work by the international non-profit organisation Reset.Tech.
Cross-checking the suspicious cases with Antibot4Navalny’s database, which has compiled at least 550 such X-posts, confirms that the same accounts have also challenged other media outlets, institutions and public figures, as EFE Verifica has been able to verify.
According to Antibot4Navalny, which operates from Russia and therefore requests the anonymity of its members, the campaign also seeks to analyse the reaction of the verifiers to the requests in order to dismantle falsehoods.
‘PLEASE VERIFY THE NEWS’
‘Hi. Check the news, please’ or ’Hello. Can you tell me, is it true that…’ are some of the common formulas used to start the messages received, which include links to Russian Telegram channels of pro-Kremlin propaganda.
They ask to check publications on Ukraine, NATO, US military spending or the Paris Olympics.
In one of these requests, a sender identified as ‘Maximilian Fleming’ starts his email by saying that ‘every day a lot of news and scandals arise about the Paris Olympics’.
In this regard, he calls for verification of an alleged publication that would have outraged him, in which a former French finance minister is reported to have compared the Olympic competition to a ‘gypsy camp’, which comes and goes from a city and leaves behind ‘economic losses, filth, disease and rats’.
There is no trace of such a statement, but there is also no evidence that such a false assertion had any significance.
Another example, in this case from an X publication, asks the EFE Verify account to check a headline about whether sanctions against Russia caused a bedbug epidemic in France.
TECHNIQUES SEEN IN OTHER CAMPAIGNS
In some cases, the publications impersonate the reputable media outlets, usurping their image and identity, as has happened with the British newspaper The Telegraph, the German television station Deutsche Welle (DW) or the US agency Bloomberg.
Secret services, such as the American CIA or the British Mi6, are also imitated.
The impersonation of prestigious media and the importance of France in this campaign coincide with the methods used by oThe impersonation of prestigious media and the importance of France in this campaign coincide with the methods used by other interference operations detected by the European Commission’s strategic communication services and the French state agency Viginum, which specialises in internet research.
In early May, the Commission unveiled a ‘false front operation’ that uses some 20 websites to impersonate Western media outlets that disseminate pro-Russian messages aimed at undermining support for Ukraine.
Viginum, for its part, has detected at least 193 websites broadcasting pro-Kremlin content.
In the context of this operation, the French government has denounced that ‘Russia is mobilising gigantic human, financial and technical resources’ against the Republic presided over by Emmanuel Macron, although it adds that the results of these operations remain ‘very limited’.
There is also an Operation Doppelgänger (from the German term for a person’s double), which for two years has been promoting disinformation by cloning numerous media websites such as The Guardian, Bild and the French version of 20minutes.
In addition to France, these operations affect other countries, such as Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain.
SOURCES:
Antibot4Navalny, an anonymous group of analysts tracking Russia-related influence operations on X.
Check First, a Finnish digital research company.
Reset.Tech, a non-profit organisation active in North America, Europe and Australia.
Viginum, a French state agency specialising in internet research.
European External Action Service (EEAS).
EU Disinfo Lab, an independent non-profit organisation that uncovered Operation Doppelgänger.
French government.
Information from EFE.
Raquel Godos, Ares Biescas and Sergio Hernández (EFE Verifica).