Greetings from Muskau

There are currently masses of Russian propaganda videos in circulation, ostensibly from news media. Many are attacking USAID. Elon Musk, Trump Junior and the AfD are happy to help. The closing of ranks is complete.

The following videos purporting to be from news organizations are currently circulating on social media. All of them are fake:

• “USAID planned to invest $500 million to promote LGBTQ+ values among Ukrainian children” - allegedly from the Wall Street Journal
• “Zelenskyi’s law banning organ harvesting from soldiers does not protect Ukraine’s military” - allegedly from the BBC
• “In Poland, the demand for sex workers is falling because Poles do not want to use the services of Ukrainian women” - allegedly from ”Deutsche Welle”
• “A Ukrainian man was arrested in Germany for setting fire to his Tesla to protest against Elon Musk’s activities” - also allegedly from ”Deutsche Welle”
• “USAID funded call centers for scam calls in Ukraine to weaken Russia” - allegedly from ”Fox News”

These examples are just a tiny fraction of a huge campaign that Russia is currently using to confuse and manipulate the public in numerous countries. The videos are relatively easy to identify: They combine agency photos and videos, occasionally snippets of real news videos, with voiceovers, presumably AI-generated, and are accompanied by repetitive music loops. All videos also use text overlays to emphasize key points. All are suitable for cell phones and produced in portrait format. Almost all contain the logo of a broadcaster or medium, including “Al Jazeera”, “Euronews” and “Politico”, for example. And they are all fakes.

Cross-platform propaganda #

Bots from the ‘Matryoshka’ network spread the clips on social media. Similar to the ‘doppelganger’ network, there are accounts that post content and others that pick up on these posts and try to get them more attention, for example by replying to large accounts or posts with a wide reach.

The “doppelganger” campaign, which has been the subject of this column several times, involved posting links to fake versions of news websites. Now videos and occasionally fake screenshots are being distributed.

The campaigns are cross-platform: you can find the fake material on Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram - and of course on X.

Parallel to the Matryoshka and doppelganger campaigns, there is currently another wave of a campaign that experts call “Storm-1516” - this is currently aimed at discrediting CDU chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz with disinformation.

Right-wing influencers hand in hand with Russian fake accounts #

The efforts often come to nothing. Sometimes, however, the matryoshka bots land a viral hit. This week, a video made the rounds claiming that actor Ben Stiller and other Hollywood celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, Orlando Bloom, Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, had allegedly received money from USAID to visit Ukraine. They had all received millions of dollars to “keep the rotten regime alive”, according to the commentary on the fake video. A Russian-language Telegram account circulated the clip on February 5.

In the middle of this week, a member of the US volunteer group “dTeam” (which has also been the subject of this column) provided me with links to several corresponding videos from such Telegram accounts. One of them was the Stiller/Jolie/Bloom video defaming USAID.

The video made a viral lightning career. A few hours after its publication on Telegram, the X account “I Meme Therefore I Am”, which frequently spreads “Make America Great Again”, pro-Musk, pro-Trump and occasionally Russian propaganda, posted the fake video for its more than 700,000 followers. Shortly afterwards, Elon Musk personally clicked on the repost button and passed the fake Russian propaganda clip on to his 217 million followers.

Donald Trump Junior also picked up on the post, commenting: “USA ID (sic) is perhaps the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people under the guise of doing good.” There was also support from the far right in Germany, as reported by Correctiv. For example, from AfD MEP Maximilian Krah.

There are several of these Telegram accounts, some with tens of thousands, some with hundreds of thousands of subscribers - apparently central hubs through which new disinformation clips and other content are fed into the bot and troll networks.

First Telegram, then Musk, then Donald Trump Jr. #

The case shows once again that Putin’s propaganda troops, the Trump family, Elon Musk and the AfD are all pulling in the same direction in terms of communication. The fact that Putin hates USAID was already a topic in this column a week ago.

Putin’s propagandists are now increasingly relying on artificial intelligence: for example, they faked the voice of Eliot Higgins, one of the founders of the investigative platform Bellingcat. In a fake audio snippet, accompanied by a photo of Higgins, the journalist can be heard supposedly explaining that he has always said that too many “fact-checking organizations” have received money from USAID. At the same time, the fake Higgins claims that they themselves have never worked with USAID, but always “exclusively with the CIA”. This is Putin’s narrative: Russia also considers Bellingcat to be a “foreign agent”.

When asked, Higgins confirmed: “Yes, they have already made several videos with a deepfake of my voice.”

The fact that Ben Stiller and Sean Penn have now openly contradicted the fake “E! News” video, that “E! News” itself has declared the video to be a fake, is of no concern to the friends of Russian disinformation in the USA: Donald Trump Jr’s X-Post referencing the video is still there. The same was true of Maximilian Krah’s post on Friday of this week.

Ben Stiller was actually in Ukraine in his capacity as ambassador for the UN refugee agency UNHCR. The UNHCR also felt compelled to publicly declare that the actor does not receive any money for his work in the good cause.

Closing ranks #

Russia is working hard to provide propaganda support for the thuggish actions of the Trump II administration, which Russia likes. There is a large and in some cases enthusiastic audience for this. Right-wing extremists in Germany and the USA are willing to help, as is at least one member of the Trump family and other people in Trump’s inner circle. The alliance between the Kremlin, European right-wing radicals, Trump and Musk already seems to be complete in terms of propaganda.

Many Matryoshka accounts turned to a new topic this week after a man injured at least 36 people with a car in Munich: they posted rows of AI-generated images that are supposed to look like they come from German cities. They show: People who are obviously supposed to look “Muslim” - with beards or burqas, for example - and blazing flames in the background. They were accompanied by comments such as “Let’s save Germany, please” or “This is surely what Germany’s future looks like”. One picture shows a woman in a burqa, an assault rifle at the ready, the burning Brandenburg Gate in the background, combined with the claim: “In Germany, the Arabs are now taking up arms.”

Putin’s bots are once again promoting the AfD - and by no means for the first time. Just like Elon Musk, who on Thursday forwarded a post by a long-exposed Indian cryptocurrency fraudster with a picture of Björn Höcke to his followers - combined with another election appeal for the far-right party. Europe urgently needs to wake up, and quickly.