Several groups that traffic in pro-Kremlin stories across social media shifted their focus in recent months from undermining the Ukrainian government to undermining Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris, according to a new report from Clemson University.
The report, released Friday by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, looks at the network behind Storm-1516, an ongoing pro-Russian disinformation campaign targeting Western public opinion on Ukraine and NATO. The research, led by professors Patrick Warren and Darren Linvill, builds on the early investigative work on the Internet Research Agency to uncover the interconnected web of organizations and individuals supporting Storm-1516.
That group, well known by watchers of Western disinformation, has a lot in common with other Russian-linked entities that are less well-known, like the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice, or R-FBI, and the BRICS Journalist Association. The groups coordinate to amplify stories in order to hurt perceptions of Ukraine among Western audiences, which they refer to as “narrative laundering” or “a process with the goal to conceal the origins and sourcing of false or misleading information,” say the researchers.
The groups use similar tactics, such as fabricating local news publications to make disinformation seem more credible. And there are big overlaps in the online networks that spread their stories. Storm-1516 and R-FBI both “employed West African diaspora actors to play the role of Black Americans.”
“We believe…that Storm-1516 and the R-FBI are part of a common structure. The R-FBI and BJA maintain a distribution network for the wider organization, to distribute both their content and the content attributed to Storm-1516,” the report’s authors wrote.
R-FBI’s stories—52 between August 2023 and October 2024—can be very successful. A narrative, about Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska using Western aid money to buy jewelry from Cartier, had 52,732 posts on X within a week of it the group first publishing on it, meaning that X users had created 52,732 separate X posts off the story , the researchers said, accounting for “10.6% of the total conversation addressing Zelensky or Zelenska in that week.”
R-FBI recently turned their attention to the U.S. presidential election, to push false stories about Harris and running-mate Tim Walz, such as a discredited claim that Walz sexually abused a minor, and that Harris hit a child with a car and fled the scene, among others.
The report comes as officials have flagged Russian election interference across the globe. In Moldova’s recent election, officials called out Russian vote-buying and anonymous bomb threats to polling stations. In the country of Georgia, officials have blamed the Kremlin for massive voter intimidation efforts. The Russian government has on-going military operations in both countries.
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