The French government also claimed that the doppelgänger group was involved in efforts to undermine support for Ukraine and interfere with the elections.
The UK Foreign Office has accused disinformation groups of creating a slew of fake versions of legitimate news websites, tricking social media users into accessing fake sources, and fomenting division and causing chaos.
The disinformation campaign is “plaguing social media with fake posts, forged documents and deepfake material,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The organizations and individuals approved by the UK are the Social Design Agency, Structura National Technologies, Ano Dialogue, Ilya Andreevich Gambashidze, Nikolai Alexandrovich Tupikin and Andrei Naumovich Perla. be.
Russia rejects such accusations of online interference.
Putin told the BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg last week that claims that Russia was inciting street protests were “absolute nonsense”.
“What happens on the streets of certain European cities is the result of domestic politics,” he said.
But the US State Department welcomed the UK’s latest sanctions announcement, which addressed the threat that “disinformation created by the Kremlin was covertly published in local news outlets for publication as genuine news stories.” He said that.
Last month, the US government claimed that Russian disinformation services were trying to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
Professor Martin Innes, director of Cardiff University’s Institute for Security, Crime and Information Innovation, argues that these groups aim to achieve political goals by causing social and cultural disruption.
He told the BBC: “The doppelganger’s signature technique is to deploy a huge number of disposable social media accounts to flood the information space around a particular article.”
“This can be especially powerful when it can amplify narratives that don’t seem overtly political.
“This is exactly what they did in an attempt to capitalize on the rumors and conspiracies surrounding the Princess of Wales.
“By repeating and reheating these, they were able to disperse anti-Ukrainian messages while simultaneously attacking Britain’s main institution, the Royal Family.”
Researchers at the Institute in Cardiff have been analyzing the influence of Russia’s so-called “political technologists” who engage in such online interference.
They say these disinformation experts are studying the Brexit referendum and training others ahead of the upcoming US presidential election.
The approach, they say, is to focus on disinformation efforts to heighten tensions on “wedge issues” such as immigration and identity politics.
