Putin’s Meme Machine: How Russia Weaponized Social Media

A trove of leaked records from a Russian disinformation campaign reveal how Moscow sought to discredit Ukraine and the Western governments that support it, while also trying to boost support for far-right political parties in the European Union.

The documents obtained by a consortium of European media institutions and shared with Schemesinvestigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, highlights the internal operations of the Social Design Agency, a Moscow-based company that says the United States led the propaganda campaign at the behest of the Kremlin.

The campaign included a diverse mix of memes, fake videos and government documents, and a network of websites impersonating legitimate news outlets in Europe to disseminate fake stories designed to undermine Western support for Ukraine after the large-scale invasion of Russia from February 2022.

Footage shows a meme denigrating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky which was shared on X by its billionaire owner, Elon Muskand garnered 86,000 reshares was the brainchild of the Social Design Agency.

leaked recordings, some of which were made public this month as part of a US indictmentthey were first obtained by the German publications Sueddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR, who then shared the documents with Schemes and several other news organizations. They were leaked by an anonymous source who told reporters that the Social Design Agency had been hacked.

The Social Design Agency is run by Ilya Gambashidzewhich was hit with US sanctions along with the company and its associates in March over the company’s influence-peddling operation, called Doppelganger.

Gambashidze did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

US authorities, who seized 32 Internet domains linked to Doppelganger earlier this month, said the effort was overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, a top Kremlin official and confidant of President Vladimir Putin.

In a video presentation included among the leaked footage, Gambashidze addresses the camera wearing a hoodie emblazoned with patches that read “Russian Ideological Troops” and “special forces commander”.

According to the video presentation, Gambashidze’s team produced 39,899 pieces of content from January to April this year, including more than 30,000 “posts,” more than 4,600 videos and video memes, and about 1,500 articles.

Among them was a fake story made to appear as if it had been published by the German newspaper Bild, claiming that Ukrainian refugees in Germany, while trying to burn a Russian flag, set fire to the house of Germans who had given them shelter.

The influence operation, Schemes found, also produced forged Ukrainian government documents, including a fake order issued by the country’s top military commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, equating the surrender of Ukrainian military personnel with treason.

Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy was appointed Ukraine’s top military officer earlier this year.

The stated purpose of the forgery, according to the leaked records, was “to discredit the military-political leadership of Ukraine and demoralize the armed forces.”

The influence operation also targeted Europe’s political landscape, including June’s European Parliament elections, with the aim of helping right-wing forces that would promote pro-Russian narratives, the leaked records show.

One document suggests “waging a complex counter-campaign against the liberal globalists, their platform and prominent representatives”, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, with a main focus on Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

The plan included efforts to portray “liberals and globalists” as cowards, including about a possible Russian attack on the EU; portray support for LGBT rights as harmful to children’s mental health; to fuel discontent with high inflation and unemployment; and accuse the “EU globalists” of trying to turn Europe into a “totalitarian military camp…like Ukraine”.

A document detailing the Social Design Agency’s strategy for influencing European elections, including increasing support for far-right parties.

The records also show that the influence operation tried to boost the electoral fortunes of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party and France’s right-wing National Rally.

One of the stated goals was to make more than half of German citizens “unwilling to sacrifice their well-being for the sake of defeating Russia” and to promote the narrative that the United States was using Germany in an economic and hybrid war against Russia.

The operation also bombarded Ukrainian state institutions and media with comments via an online botnet that produced nearly 34 million comments from January to April, according to an internal document.

Via RFE/RL

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