Online influence campaigns tied to Russia are expected to promote Western politicians’ opposition to ongoing support for Ukraine ahead of an upcoming election in the United States, according to a report published by Meta on Thursday.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine more than two years ago, Moscow has bombarded global social media networks with covert efforts to undermine the West’s support for Kyiv. It has also elevated speeches from national lawmakers from France to Canada who argue the tens of billions of dollars provided to Ukraine would have been better spent at home.
Ahead of the November presidential election in the U.S., where Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance and other leading Republican lawmakers have openly challenged Washington’s financial support for Ukraine, Meta said that Russia-based influence operations would likely piggyback onto these domestic messages for their own political gain.
The tech giant made clear, however, that there were no ties between such U.S. politicians and Russian actors seeking to use lawmakers’ comments to foment division ahead of November’s vote.
“We should expect to see Russian attempts to target election-related debates, particularly when they touch on support for Ukraine,” David Agranovich, a security policy director at Meta, told reporters Wednesday. The “trend is more about the subject, namely, countering support for Ukraine, than it is about any particular party.”
The Kremlin has grown increasingly sophisticated in targeting Western audiences with digital interference over the last decade, though its overall effect on how people vote remains unclear.
As tech companies, policymakers and civil society groups have become more successful at outing such campaigns, Russia-based groups — only some officially attributed to the Russian state — have shifted tactics to promote messages created by domestic politicians and influencers. Previously, they had attempted to generate divisive social media posts themselves.
During the recent Paris Olympic Games and the ongoing far-right unrest in the United Kingdom, for instance, Russia-affiliated social media accounts heavily promoted local social media users as examples of why Western democracy was in decline, based on POLITICO’s review of thousands of social media posts across Facebook, TikTok and X.
In its latest report, Meta said it had removed four Russia-based clandestine influence operations targeting social media users across Europe, the U.S. and countries like Azerbaijan and Mali, respectively. That included, collectively, 340 Facebook accounts and pages and Instagram accounts that had spent more than $150,000, in total, on social media advertising.
The company said these campaigns focused primarily on criticizing Ukraine, urging other countries not to support the Eastern European country and questioning why the West should earmark so much money for the ongoing war. Meta added that it had removed these Russia-linked efforts before they gained much traction online.
With less than three months to go before the U.S. election, the tech giant also said it had shut down a separate covert operation, originating within the country, that had created a fake political advocacy group to target “real conservatives” in key competitive states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
While Meta could not identify who was behind this activity, the influence campaign borrowed heavily from known Russian tactics, including using artificial intelligence tools to create fake social media accounts that set up state-based Facebook accounts tied to the false political advocacy group.
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