Press
Moscow is trying to influence elections in the West with disinformation. The fake news plays on emotions – and reaches an audience of millions.
London – The war in Ukraine is the first large-scale cyber war. Moscow’s battle plan includes more than just weapons, tanks and soldiers. Hybrid war tactics also play a role – including disinformation. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), Russia creates false reports and spreads them via websites of supposed US newspapers that do not exist.
This means Moscow is reaching millions of people. This has consequences not only for the Ukraine Warbut recently also hit the personal environment of the Ukrainian President.
Russian disinformation campaign in the US election campaign: fake news, real scandal
An investigation of the British media BBC resultedthat Russian websites are posing as local US newspapers in order to US election The sites are filled with false reports, created with the help of artificial intelligence. This technology has made great leaps forward, especially since last year with ChatGPT and other providers. Creating deepfakes, i.e. deceptively real-looking photos and videos, is child’s play. A key figure in the Russian disinformation campaign is, according to BBC a former police officer from Florida who now lives in Moscow.
Moscow’s false reports quickly stick in people’s minds and cause real excitement if readers do not question the content. One example shows this: According to this, Olena Selenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, is said to have bought a rare Bugatti sports car worth 4.5 million euros during a visit to Paris – this is false, as is the alleged origin of the money. The car is said to have belonged to the wife of Volodymyr Zelensky paid for with US military aid. Bugatti itself spoke of “fake news” in a press releaseThe story didn’t stand up to fact checkers, but everyone can remember it.
Detecting disinformation
A characteristic of disinformation is usually that the wording is sensationalist and the report arouses strong emotions – often anger or rage. To identify false reports, The Federal Government advisesto critically question reports instead of forwarding them directly, to use fact checks, to check the sender of the message and the images and to compare sources.
Russia targets US voters with fake news: Trump is Putin’s preferred candidate
The false reports also end up on social media. According to BBC At least twelve million users saw the report about Olena Selenska on the X platform (formerly Twitter) alone. Other stories, which were spread by fake US-sounding websites such as “The Houston Post” or “Chicago Chronicle”, even reached US representatives. Republican US Senator JD Vance, for example, shared a fake report about two Ukrainian officials who had allegedly bought yachts with US money.
In order to influence US voters, Russian propagandists are not even stopping at Hollywood stars: With the help of AI, they got actors like Adam Sandler and Emma Stone to tell untruths about Ukraine and President Zelensky. The fake videos were uploaded to X in April and shared hundreds of times. Russia is also targeting the USA in its information war because Washington is by far Ukraine’s biggest supporter. What happens if military aid does not arrive was shown in the spring by the delay in the US Congress by the Republicans.
Ukraine would lose the war without US aid, warned Selenskyj at the time. The Republicans’ blockade, however, was entirely in Putin’s interest. The former US President Donald Trump is considered the Kremlin chief’s preferred candidate in the US presidential election in November. According to US intelligence information, Moscow is said to have influenced the US election in favor of the real estate mogul as early as 2016. Another point that, from Putin’s perspective, speaks in Trump’s favor: the Republican recently made derogatory comments about the Western military alliance NATO.
Russian propaganda in elections in the West: “Democracy in danger”
Russia now launches disinformation campaigns before all major elections in the West. Before the European elections, for example, Russian propagandists had put fabricated statements about Ukraine into the mouths of well-known German personalities such as Til Schweiger. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Great Britain, numerous fake accounts on X also spread false information and hate, as the organization Global Witness announced on Tuesday (July 2).
In addition to conspiracy theories, the messages also contained support for PutinCampaign director Ava Lee warned that democracy was in danger if online discussions were “influenced by someone who paid for bots to spread division or bring a particular party to power.”
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