Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence.
US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing Russian civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support Kremlin objectives, obscuring the FSB’s role through layers of ostensibly independent actors.
“These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small scale, the overall goal being US [and] Western persons presenting these ideas, seemingly organic,” a US official authorized to discuss the material told CNN. “The co-optee influence operations are built primarily on personal relationships … they build trust with them and then they can leverage that to covertly push the FSB’s agenda.”
The campaigns have sometimes been effective at planting Russian narratives in the Western press, according to the intelligence. Maxim Grigoriev, who heads a Russian NGO, made multiple speeches to the UN presenting a false study that claimed the humanitarian group the White Helmets – which operates in Syria – was running a black market for human organs and had faked chemical attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with whom Russia is allied. Those claims eventually found their way into a television report on the far-right OANN in the United States, according to open-source materials provided by the official.
…
But the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for Russian propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing.
“At the end of the day, this unwitting target is disseminating Russian influence operation, Russian propaganda to their target public,” the US official said. “Ultimately, a lot of these are unwitting people — they remain unaware who is essentially seeding these narratives.”
The intelligence provides several examples of Russian civilian “co-optees” doing the bidding of the FSB.
One man, Andrey Stepanenko, founded a media project in 2014 that sponsored journalists from the US and the West to visit eastern Ukraine and learn “the alleged truth” about what was happening in the region. In fact, the FSB directed his efforts and “almost certainly financed the project,” according to the declassified intelligence.
CNN was not able to locate Stepanenko to ask for comment.
The US official also cited Natalia Burlinova, the founder of a Russian NGO who routinely coordinated FSB-funded public diplomacy efforts aimed at influencing Western views. In 2018, she visited, had meetings and hosted events at multiple US think tanks and universities in New York, Boston and Washington – work that was funded by the FSB, according to the intelligence. Her conduct was already public: She was indicted earlier this year on charges of conspiring with an FSB officer to act as an illegal agent of Russia inside the United States, although she remains at liberty in Russia.
Burlinova in an email to CNN denied that her US trips in 2018 were financed by the FSB.
“All travel expenses were financed by a grant that we previously received from the Presidential Grants Fund, the main grant operator of Russia,” she said. “The FSB of Russia did not give me any money for the trip.”
The official declined to offer specifics to back up the intelligence community’s assertions that the FSB is funding this kind of operation but noted that once officials were able establish FSB backing, it is easy to trace the narratives they are pushing in open-source materials.
“Once you’re aware of who these people are and their association with the FSB, by nature of what they’re doing, they have very, very public personas,” the official said. “And so I would just say it’s not really difficult to kind of follow the strings.”
The US official declined to say whether Russia has used these same tactics to try to influence US elections.
The FSB does use similar tactics to influence political opinion within Russia, according to the intelligence. In one instance, a Russian media figure named Anton Tsvetkov organized protests outside of embassies in Moscow — including the US Embassy — at the FSB’s behest. The protests pushed Russia’s narrative of the war in Ukraine, “promoting the ‘Ukrainian Nazi’ narrative and blaming the U.S. and its allies for the deaths of children in the Donbass,” while hiding the Russian government’s role, according to the declassified intelligence.
“The purpose of those protests really was … designed to sell it to the Russian people,” the US official said.
Bro this isn’t news. Its r/TheDonald, Lemmygrad, and half of youtube and facebook. This has been happening since 2016.
I’d still say it’s news, it’s just confirming that Russia has continued their same pattern of behavior. Early on the troll farms actually infiltrated communities (I remember reading that they targeted the Bernie subreddit too), but now they just upvote, like, and share unwitting US pawns
Yeah I thought it was weird when so many Bernie supporters switched to Trump. They’re political opposites.
Not just that. The whole “Bernie or bust, never support democrats again!” Stuff
There were waves of people who claimed that because their guy Bernie didn’t get the nom, they threw a fit and were outright voting 3rd party instead of Biden. Of course, none of them ever went to the polls to vote in the primaries because [insert 14 different excuses]
Yeah, that stuff was incredibly transparent I don’t think it got many real people… But if they get just one in five hundred former supporters then it still moves the needle.
It’s insane that our margins are what they are. A lot of this stuff just shouldn’t have debate. It’s too common sense.
First past the post creates these razor thin margins. It’s not organic. If we had a ranked choice required plurality then the margins would widen in most races and flip in others.
I know a former Bernie bro. He switched to trump because “the system fucked Bernie and trump is trying to fuck the system”
Lol who downvotes someone for telling a story. Come on guys, he’s not advocating for this, just sharing a story.
Give people a vote system and they’ll prove they suck I guess. Thanks though
I wonder if some of these were former Ron Paul types. I know I was briefly until I learned more about him. Honestly I just wanted weed to be legal nationally.
Honestly, I’m not sure. I know he worked for the DNC for a while, but I also know a deep end right winger became close friends with him so who the hell knows what happened. Dude always struck me as a bit impressionable
Before the 2016 election, there were a few actually-good parts of Trump’s platform that he had in common with Bernie, such as opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a few other things that I can’t remember at the moment.
Those commonalities were pretty much all either Trump supporting the right thing for the wrong reasons or just blatant lies, but some of the stupider Bernie supporters were duped, I guess?
(FWIW, I supported Bernie but still voted D in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.)
And I’ll likely vote against Biden in the primary, but when it comes to the general I’ll compromise. Compromise is a core part of democracy.
Exactly. I can’t stand Hillary, but I absolutely voted for her in the general. Because the alternative was considerably worse. Many of us saw through Trump’s bullshit and recognized him as having the complete opposite mentality of what makes somebody a good president. It’s not even about politics. Trump isn’t a politician! He bragged about dodging taxes. He bullies people. The list goes on and on. And when he was elected, many people were sounding the alarm that there’s no way this guy is voluntarily leaving office. If he gets impeached and convicted, loses the re-election, or hits his 2 term limit, it was pretty obvious how he was going to act. And what really drove it home was the vast number of crimes he committed while in office. He knew that being president was the only thing shielding him from criminal prosecution. There’s no way he was going to leave office peacefully. Even during the primaries, he refused to pledge his support to whoever won the nomination if it wasn’t him. He shoved other world leaders out of the way so he could stand in front of them. He doctored a National Weather Service map with a sharpie because he couldn’t possibly admit that he made a mistake about where a hurricane was headed. He spent his entire presidency bullying people on Twitter.
I mean, yeah, Hillary and Biden suck. They’re neolibs. But if Trump is the alternative, I’ll be the first in line to vote for the neolibs. And sadly, being in my 40s, Biden is probably the best president we’ve had in my lifetime. I may question his true allegiances, but I stand with nearly every decision he’s made while he’s been president. I just wish we could get a left wing populist president in my lifetime. Everybody thought Obama was that person, but I saw through his shit when he was campaigning. He made a lot of promises that he would never be able to keep, and when push came to shove he turned out to be a neolib all along. But if I had to choose between Obama and Trump, Obama all the way.
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No. That is simply untrue.
First, if you feel Bernie and Trump are both populists then that term means absolutely nothing.
Second, people don’t go “I like this guy because he wants to tax the rich, have universal healthcare and wants to go regulations to help stop climate change,” and then when that guy loses think “this other guy who acts nothing like the candidate I supported and has literally the opposite policies might hear me so I’m all in on him!”
This is a fiction made up to push to narrative that it isn’t foreign propaganda.
First, if you feel Bernie and Trump are both populists then that term means absolutely nothing.
“Populist” can mean different things and have different connotations. Bernie was a positive sort of populist, in the sense that he advocated for policies that would help the working class. Trump was a negative sort of populist, in the sense that’s a euphemism for “demagogue.”
Populist really just means telling people what they want to hear. Bernie and Trump are both populists, they just have (largely) very different audiences.
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It wasn’t even subtle.
I remember posts with thousands of upvotes from this website called thedurian. I googled the people who ran it, one of them had a linkedin which mentioned his location as Moscow and that he had previously worked for RT.
Given I was banned for posting screenshots, I suspect the mods of /r/thedonald were in on it.
TheDonald started as a joke that was legitimately funny. As soon as anyone tried to call it out as a joke, that person would be banned within seconds. That’s not normal, volunteer moderation.
There were people with the power to ban paid to control that sub. They took shifts, likely from Russia.
“Id rather be a Russian than a Democrat”
Right around the time Russians stopped being “damn commies” to “antidote to the degenerate west” to them.
Oh SHIT I actually forgot that was a thing commonly heard. Frankly it’s been brain breaking news headlines (and usually the even with context it was accurate headlines) since 2015 so hard to remember it all.
It’s also Tucker and Talk Radio.
And there is literally nothing to declassify. This has been happening out in the open for years. The FBI has been warning us about this shit multiple times. Yet the funny think is that people don’t think it is happening to them.
This has been happening for way longer than that
I noticed a decent number of Russian memes (before Trump) trying to make Russia and Putin look cool, and remember wondering if they were from Russians actually trying or from Westerners having lolz.
There’s another lemmy instance to watch out for??? Unless it’s old hat already, I don’t see much beyond .world stuff
hexbear is another one that’s defederated thankfully
IIRC, lemmy.world defederated with lemmygrad a while ago.
Ah ty. Now I want something like r/subredditdrama but it’s to keep track of this stuff lol. I miss consuming harmless drama
Honestly there needs to be some way to easily see who is defederated from who, and ideally why.
So far it’s safe to assume it’s because the user base are tankies/pro russia/far right and spread those comments while also causing problems in whatever instance defederalizes them. I just want the tea
There’s trackers for that
Really? Can you provide a link or the relevant search keywords to find such a thing?
Thank you for supporting the 24h news cycle, where everything is breaking yet nothing matters past a day because „it isn’t news“ anymore.
That’s a shock to no one.
My anti-mask friend kept linking Zero Hedge articles to support his stance. Not recognizing the source, I did 10 minutes of research and told him his sole source of information appeared to be a Russian propaganda vehicle. He went on a very aggressive rant about my arrogance at dismissing his “alt media” out of hand.
About a year later, the FBI publicly outed zero hedge as pedaling Russian propaganda. But apparently that was fake news too.
It’s impossible to talk to that guy anymore. He doesn’t live in reality.
I too have lost friends to “anti-western alt media”
They tell me how YouTube is censoring everything and thus rumble is the place to go. Gave that site a quick search and learned all I needed to know lol.
They also claim Russia a victim of western aggression but cannot put together a reasonable answer in relation to the invasion of ukr. To no surprise, they also have nothing to say in regards to the persecution of lgbt and non-Roman Catholics, the joke that is their “democracy”. The US is disgusting to them, will trot out foreign policy…. but Russia is A-Okay somehow!
“Oh well I’m not sure of the specifics so maybe they have a good reason”, and yet you’re so sure Russia is the victim? Fucking sad as hell. Lost fucking cause
They say shit like how Iran is one of the most moral countries around. I pointed to the uprisings of women after killings related to hijabs and I was told that I can’t be sure of what’s happening over there. It’s just so fucking obvious that it’s propaganda being parroted, I just don’t understand how you can be so fucking dumb
Not all of the online ones are that dumb. Some are just straight up Russian. Meanwhile 80% of the GOP won’t speak out against it because they don’t want to lose their seats.
I can’t believe we still have operational coal plants in 2023. That fact alone is insane. We should be making a bipartisan plan to phase out the common use of gasoline and diesel. Even just saying we’ll tax gas to a price of $10/gallon by 2030 would be enough to make the transition happen.
We should be taking action against anything on the seas burning bunker fuel.
The easiest shit to combat climate change really is low hanging fruit. Of course at this point we’ll need active measures as well. We’ve gone too far to just stop polluting.
Had a similar experience on a forum during peak pandemic, all the sources provided ended up being linked to Russia and mostly to the same person that was involved in a bunch of “news” websites. Try explaining to someone that they don’t know how to validate a source… Yeah…
Yuuup. One of his sources saying that covid was overblown was Frontline Doctors of America. I spent 20 minutes looking into who they were. Not a single virologist, pathologist, etc in the bunch, claiming that covid was curable.
He literally said “he lost respect” for me that day when I laughed that one of his source’s doctors was on video saying vaginally cysts were caused by demon rape in your dreams. He gave me a back faith victim argument about being disrespectful to other people’s cultures.
Yeah dude. Sure. That’s what you’re upset about, dude who literally told me, verbatim, “emotions are stupid” after I gave him a long thought out multiple page explanation of my side, telling him about seeing my parents waste away because they couldn’t go outside because my mother’s immuno compromised from chemo, etc etc.
Fuck your bad faith bullshit.
Isn’t dismissing something you don’t like as stupid an emotional reaction? I mean ‘stupid’ is not really exactly the same as ‘lacking in intelligence,’ it’s a word with emotional weight.
Yes, it is. And even more infuriating that his next reply, the explanation of HIS stance, was that covid was hurting HIS business (lawyer, ambulance chaser).
He missed the irony completely. And that conversation has done irreparable damage to our friendship. We were very close. I was a groomsman at his wedding before all of this.
We’ve tried to reconcile, but it’s not there. In each of our opinions, the other’s head is too far up ones ass.
I totally understand. I’ve been there myself. Not with anyone super close, but I’ve still lost friends to this insanity.
Those doctors need to lose their license.
Yeah, I mean, prescribing medication for off label use seems like an easy malpractice suit. These are the dickhead family practice doctors that pushed chlortrimeton on their patients and claimed it cured covid because none of them died.
emotions are stupid
If you don’t respect or understand your own feelings you are not going to be able to attribute the correct source for them.
Why did you sexually harass her? I wasn’t, she was flirting. How else can you explain why I was attracted to her?
Why did you yell at your coworker? He is always doing x!
I bet you that your friend talks like this all the time. He can’t accept that he can just be sad or angry or horny or happy. No, his response to a situation is always appropriate. It is everyone else that is doing this to him.
I never understood this. We know who is writing those articles, we know where he lives (ffs it is Mahwah New Jersey, right on his Wikipedia page), we know he is being funded by the Russian government and yet nothing. How is my government can just randomly murder people for normal activities and yet can’t even put the fear of God in this guy? Grab him, perp walk him, throw him in a jail cell with two rival gangs for the night, interrogate him for a day, and ditch him two hours away with no money sne a dead cellphone.
Are they registered foreign agents? If so, they’re probably in the clear. If not, they may be violating federal law. Americans acting on behalf of a foreign government are required to register with the DOJ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act
“Unwitting westerners” = MAGAtard trumpers for those of you that don’t want to read it all.
also communities like chapotraphouse that’s on hexbear that’s thankfully defederated on this instance, they just vomit Kremlin propaganda, they are blaming the USA for Russia invading Ukraine can’t make that shit up, some of them actually reveal their true colors though and openly call for the annihilation of Ukraine
The lemmygrad and lemmy.ml tankies are bad enough as it is.
isn’t lemmygrad also defederated?
Hexbear- I’ve heard of that shithole. Haven’t witnessed it first-hand so I’m glad admins are doing a good job at keeping that trash out.
Ironic
Ironic how? That hate isn’t tolerated? Yeah. That is ironic.
Ironic that a Lemmy user is cheering the censoring of a community they admit they’ve never seen do any ill.
I’ve seen the posts where links are used to prove their racism and bullshit brigading. I personally haven’t interacted with them. Do I need to be murdered to hate murderers?
I’ve yet to see an apologist make a good argument.
An easy way to identify them is to ask roughly how many Chinese citizens were killed in Tiananmen Square in 1989. You can add “more or less than a hundred” to make it simpler and faster.
Don’t forget tankies!
The report was released by a top ranking military official known as “Captain Obvious”.
They’re atleast a “Colonel Obvious”
“General Knowledge”
salutes the general
Isn’t it interesting that tankie culture doesn’t seem to be commenting on this.
Seems almost like they have a playbook for interactions on the internet and this one is marked as “to be ignored”.
this is a community on lemmy world and lemmy.world is defederated from Hexbear where most of the tankies are
Aren’t they mostly on lemmygrad?
hexbear has them too, chapotraphouse community there is a fucking shithole
All 37 of them.
Seems like a lot of them have alts and Lemmygrad is rife with them as well.
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Yes, Trump supporters, but plenty on the left parrot the talking points too. I was banned from a leftist space on Reddit for saying Russia operates troll farms and targets Americans.
The justification? I was parroting US propaganda.
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They are as much leftist as I am. They are just authoritarian left who somehow have forgotten Russia is not even nominally leftist outside some propaganda. I disagree as liberal socialist with them as much as I do with right-wing people, but we can’t deny that their economic policies are usually actually leftist. But it is important to note, that they aren’t common at least where I am.
I have an extra left wing sister in law. Around here she would likely be called a tankie. She regularly posts memes about how awful war is and how everyone should refuse to go and then there would be no war. She especially makes those posts when Ukraine goes on the offence (even in its own country). Oddly though, she NEVER makes those posts in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
I have an extra left wing sister in law. Around here she would likely be called a tankie. She regularly posts memes about how awful war is and how everyone should refuse to go and then there would be no war. She especially makes those posts when Ukraine goes on the offence (even in its own country). Oddly though, she NEVER makes those posts in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Useful idiots.
Sadly, yes.
Yes, Trump supporters, but plenty on the left parrot the talking points too. I was banned from a leftist space on Reddit for saying Russia operates troll farms and targets Americans.
I mean, maybe Jimmy Dore, but he’s hardly a leftist.
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I mean I understand and there are definitely idiots on both sides. I chalk it up to the person in infancy of being woke and feel like they have all the answers, with all the passion of it being new and none of the experience to temper things for reality. Very black and white.
However both suck and I won’t support either is an opinion most politically active people are going to scoff at because by choosing none, you’re supporting the worst sides of both. The reason that homophobic was thrown around is based on the fact that if someone does not care enough that Republicans are actively seeking out legislation to harm and ostracize members of the LGBTQA community to vote Democrat then you’re essentially in support. Same goes with women’s rights and race issues. It’s a shame that people resort to name calling, ANYONE would dig in their heels and not even consider listening as soon as they are insulted like that. It’s unhelpful at best and harmful always.
I’m glad you’re educating yourself and supporting your sister! I’m not trans but familiar enough with it, if you have any questions or to just sort of talk about it with someone not directly impacted and thus you don’t have to worry about my feelings or whatever, feel free to message me.
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Thanks for your hard work for sanders! He is my dream pick for president. If you mean politically I do disagree that things are deeper than they appear (in the context of one side wanting to control or harm certain groups) but if you meant interpreting comments on social media then yeah, I can agree there for sure.
And yeah I meant feel free to DM!
“Do you like waffles, or pancakes?” “Pancakes I guess?” “Oh so you hate waffles then?!”
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Literally everyone knows this
Literally everyone who wasn’t duped knows this
I’d bet $100 the FSB is directly responsible for all the red scare propaganda on lemmy.
Smells like hexbear
If I have to read another comment about all the evil things tankies are defending without ever actually seeing a tankie on Lemmy I’m going to fucking lose my mind
Your instance has defederated from most of them. You won’t see them. It’s Lemmygrad and hexbear if you’re interested, but you’d have to go to a different instance to see them.
Do you not see heaps of hexbear comments?
I’m not the person you asked but I’ll chime in since I share their sentiment.
The answer is no, not a single one. But that’s because I’m on lemmy.world and hexbear is defederated from this instance. All the shit talking I see about hexbear is actually making me more and more curious about checking it out to see if its true, because it might be that hexbear is just a reasonable leftist place that is strong and people talking shit about it are just right wingers or centrists who are trying to give hexbear a bad name.
I’ll probably check it out eventually when I’ve become curious enough due to people talking shit about it. It’s probably shit though, but I don’t know that.
I’m leftist, but not whatever hexbear or lemmygrad is. Have fun viewing the tanky comments. I sure did. To really get the full experience, express support for anything supported by western governments . You’ll get tons of long comments.
Yeah, I just checked it out and it’s not my cup of tea. It seems like I align with them on much of their critique on a lot of stuff but I’m not in support of their endorsements (like the CCP). I also don’t like those kinds of memes and find the blending of serious discussions and (what I think is) juvenile memes to be off putting.
I saw both the best (well argued and sourced) and worst (denial of Ughurs genocide and the state of Taiwan) comments on that instance.
I’m not going back there though, I’m too old and tiered to have those kinds of discussion in an environment that is hostile to opposing views on certain topics.
Just get a vomit bag ready.
I’m pretty far left. They are not reasonable leftists, and quite possibly often not leftists at all. They defend authoritarianism constantly, as long as it is anti-western. If you argue against then on a point they won’t defend it, they’ll just attack you for something else. It’s almost always un-reasoned.
lemmy.world is defederated from hexbear, one of the largest tankie instances. many other major instances, like lemm.ee, are not.
Cool, so you won’t see them but trust us it’s there. Also if you talk about it we’ll downvote you.
This has been my general experience on Lemmy about the topic, seems like propaganda bots to me but maybe people are just really that stupid
Make an account on hexbear and then view the propaganda. Then come back and realize you are protected from that on Lemmy.world.
Even non-federated instances can be seen in their domain name. lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net in these cases.
Word
I am shocked. This is my shocked face 😮
No shit
Tucker Carlson is the prime example of this… he’s been doing real estate deals with Russians for a long time, and they feed him his “news”…
Aww, how cute. They think these people are doing this unwittingly. I’m convinced there are some people doing this quite wittingly – and a bunch are in office…
Makes you wonder what kind of disruptive narratives they’re pushing online that aren’t Russia-related.
What kinds of trends would they want to amplify in western online communities to cause the most harm over time?
Like how a remarkable proportion of pro-Russia social media accounts were also antivaxxers during COVID?
Don’t forget climate change denial.
Which is particularly beneficial for Russia as their useless land will become prime agricultural land and they’ll have access to more warm water ports.
They say the same for Canada and it doesn’t work like that. It isn’t going to warm enough, increased variability is even worse for crops, and the soil typically isn’t good for agriculture anyway even if the temperature was better.
Correct, it does help Russia’s energy economy right now though.
Most of Canada is Muskeg or the Canadian shield. (rock)
We wouldn’t gain much more usable land than we already have. About the only advantage is I won’t have to shovel my driveway anymore.
Anything the modern far right champions today is destructive to the US so… the entire conservative political ideology.
Remember when Republican congress members visited Russia on the 4th of July?
The Russian information doctrine is to fuel any fire that has two sides. They don’t actually pick sides, they just want nations more divided, because nation that is divided cannot function properly.
They definitely pick sides. There are cases where they’ll specifically support the other side for a specific rally or action if they think it can cause disruption and strife, but those cases are an exception to the rule.
Everyone is focusing on “unwitting Westerners” while I’m focused on “laundering propaganda.” Like, that’s just how propoganda from other countries works right? Starts from a source, then people who believe the source spread it around their own country.
This seems to be acting like it’s some new fangled way to spread fear and misinformation when that’s the way it’s always worked. The only difference now is that it’s all online and people rarely verify sources so they take what they read as facts at face value.
