Doppelgänger is aRussian disinformation campaign established in 2022 by Russian IT firm Social Design Agency (SDA).[1] It has targeted Ukraine, Germany, France, and the United States,[2] with the aim of undermining support for Ukraine in Russia'sinvasion of the country.[3]
The aim is to serve the Kremlin's narrative, primarily to weaken Western support for Ukraine. The narrative favors four themes (messages):
The second goal for the propaganda articles is to be quoted and picked up by Russian media in order to reach the Russian population through thealternative reality that Russian power is trying to maintain about the war in Ukraine.[5]
Doppelgänger has been active since May 2022.[2][6] The campaign was unmasked byEU DisinfoLab that September.[7][6] In May 2024, the companyOpenAI removed accounts used by Doppelgänger ininfluence operations.[8]
Doppelgänger relies on fake websites that mimic the appearance of existing news sources, such asDer Spiegel,Le Parisien,Fox News andThe Washington Post.[3][9][10] In the U.S., Doppelgänger has pushed articles criticizing theLGBTQ rights movement, which has been outlawed in Russia, and raising doubts about the competence of the military.[2]
Doppelgänger's fake websites push false stories that are critical of Ukrainian presidentVolodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. presidentJoe Biden and the White House's Ukraine policy.[3]
In June 2023, French authorities announced they had uncovered a Doppelgänger campaign to target several French daily newspapers such asLe Figaro,Le Parisien,Le Monde and20 minutes, as well as theMinistry of Foreign Affairs. The campaign created copycat websites of the newspapers, using them to promote pro-Russian content, including a fakeLe Monde article titled "French Minister supports the murder of Russian soldiers in Ukraine". A fake Ministry of Foreign Affairs website was also created, including a fake announcement for a 1.5% tax on "every monetary transaction" to finance military support for Ukraine.[11][12]
Despite its discovery and denunciation, Operation Doppelgänger continued. In August 2023, Meta's security report stated that Doppelgänger was targeting a new country: the United States. In the summer of 2023, Russian services copied the websites of Fox News,The Washington Post and the NATO website.[13]
In November 2023, researchers identified a disinformation campaign linked to Doppelgänger onFacebook. The campaign pushed ads with pictures of celebrities such asTaylor Swift,Beyoncé,Justin Bieber and others alongside fake pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian quotes.[6]
Doppelgänger has pushed false information about theGaza war using fake websites that mimic the appearance of Fox News,Le Parisien andDer Spiegel.[9][10] The websites' articles promote the suggestion that financial support for Ukraine from Western powers has been diverted to Israel and that Ukraine will lose all military and financial support from the West.[10] The fake articles appeared in Russian, Ukrainian, English, French, German and Hebrew, and were relayed by bots onTwitter. One forged German report attempted to link the energy crisis in Europe to the war, and adeepfakeAI-generated video showed anIDF soldier inviting Ukrainians to join the Israeli army in exchange for payment and citizenship.[9][14]
In November 2023, France accused Doppelgänger and Recent Reliable News (RRN) of interfering in its internal affairs by sharing photos ofStar of David graffiti painted on buildings acrossParis.[15][16] At the end of October 2023, stenciled blue Stars of David were discovered on street walls in Paris and its suburbs. The act, immediately described asantisemitic, was widely denounced as reminiscent of the Stars of David painted by the Nazis on Jewish-owned businesses. After a few days and the arrest of a Moldovan couple suspected of tagging the stars at the request of Anatoliï Prizenko, a pro-RussianMoldovan businessman,Le Monde reported that Prizenko was potentially behind the graffiti incident.[17][15][18] A Russian influence operation was suspected. On November 9, 2023, France issued an official statement condemning the involvement of the Doppelgänger network. Numerous accounts, attributed "with a high degree of trust" to the Doppelgänger network, were the first to publish online photographs of the stenciled Stars of David, and were instrumental in artificially amplifying their spread on social networks.[18] France's foreign ministry said it demonstrated how Russia was taking advantage of "international crises" to create confusion and fuel tensions.[15]