Doppelgängers and deepfakes: How Russian trolls are meddling in the world’s second-biggest democratic vote

If you believe everything you read, it would seem the European Union wants to ban drivers from getting their old cars repaired, or that it plans to limit the flights people can take by implementing “carbon passports.” It might even impose Covid-style “climate lockdowns.”

None of these things are true, but as 373 million eligible voters head to polls this week to elect a new EU parliament, a torrent of disinformation is flooding the continent.

The EU and several of its member countries have set up investigative agencies to counter disinformation ahead of the vote — and they are squarely focused on campaigns originating in Russia.

Allegations of Russian disinformation around elections are nothing new — they have been a feature in the run-up to votes in the United States, United Kingdom and the EU before, though Russia has always denied waging such campaigns. But the tactics are becoming more sophisticated, and are leaping from online platforms into parliaments and public discourse.

Artificial intelligence and deepfakes are quickly becoming the tools of choice by those looking to spread false narratives, said Morgan Wright, chief security advisor for SentinelOne, an American cybersecurity company.

SentinelOne, alongside the independent research group EU DisinfoLab, has worked to uncover a Russia-based influence network operating in Europe since 2022 dubbed “Doppelgänger.”

The network puts out clone sites of prominent European media organizations, including major publications like the Guardian and Bild in Germany, as vehicles to spread misleading and false content. There is a focus on fake stories to influence attitudes on subjects like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But for the past year, the climate crisis has been the second-most targeted subject, according to the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO).

One such fake story, published on a website mimicking Bild, described how a teenage cyclist bled to death after streetlights were turned off to save electricity. The fake article claimed the German government cut the lights because of an energy crisis fueled by sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine. Before the war, Germany had relied heavily on Russian gas for energy. The story was debunked by numerous German media outlets, but continued spreading on Facebook.

Paula Gori, EDMO’s secretary general, said that spreading false climate narratives fits in with Russia’s geopolitical goals as the country’s lucrative oil and gas sector has been hit with sanctions and an EU ban on imports.

“It’s quite easy for Russians to spread disinformation that the EU is struggling because of the sanctions, and European citizens are struggling because there is no gas from Russia,” she said.

False narratives that renewables are doing little for the EU’s energy security have also emerged, Gori said. Official statistics, however, tell a different story: In 2022, renewables accounted for 23% of the energy consumed in the EU. Some European countries are now using more renewable energy than fossil fuels.

EU DisinfoLab found other stories falsely claiming wind turbines were causing toxic pollution.

The aim also appears to be to sow confusion and division, rather than to bring about a change in climate policy, Wright said.

“Russia has been very opportunistic. It’s looking for controversy and strife, and any current issues that they can exploit,” he said. “The goal is to get (people) fighting with each other. They don’t care about climate policy.”

Russia has another interest in undermining the EU’s messaging on climate. As it seeks to strengthen its relations in the Global South, particularly in Africa and Asia, where it is competing with the West for business and influence, it is trying to depict Europe’s climate policies to exploit poorer countries and stop them from industrializing, Gori said.

This idea of using disinformation to widen existing divisions is straight from Russia’s old disinformation handbook, according to Wright.

“If you go back to 1917, to the creation of Cheka, the first of Russia’s intelligence organization, they’ve been the masters at disinformation for over 100 years,” he said. “They’ve been using the same tactics for decades, it’s the tools that change — now it’s artificial intelligence and social media.”

Forced to eat insects?

Campaigns that begin online are seeping into Europe’s parliaments, where populist politicians are peddling some of the same false narratives.

Politicians in France and Italy have shared false news that climate policies to cut pollution from farming will force EU citizens to eat insects, while people in Croatia, Germany and Poland were told politicians in England were imposing “climate lockdowns” on their citizens and similar restrictions could be coming to their countries.

The campaigns are having real-life consequences, particularly for the EU’s Green Deal legislation, the bloc’s overarching vision for climate action.

The EU is considered a global leader in tackling planet-heating pollution, but climate disinformation could undermine the bloc’s ambitious goal to reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2040, compared with 1990 levels.

That umbrella goal is already under threat. The“green wave” that brought many climate-focused politicians to power in the 2019 European elections looks to be over, with green parties predicted to suffer heavy losses this month, which would mean fewer progressive climate voices in parliament.

Other fake stories have targeted the EU’s agricultural policies, most notably through farmers protests that swept through a number of EU states, including France, Germany, Spain and Poland this year.

Gori said EDMO’s researchers found clear evidence of attempts to hijack the protests, which started as grassroots initiatives over genuine farmer concerns. She pointed to a widely shared false story claiming famers in France and Spain would be “booted off their land” to make way for solar plants.

There were many reasons farmers took to the streets, but some of the perceived negative impacts of green farming proposals led to the EU dropping or diluting a number of the policies.

The EU scrapped a plan to cut the use of pesticides in half by 2030, and it delayed new rules on soil health and biodiversity. It also dropped a requirement to cut non-carbon greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.

“The protests were legitimate, of course … but they were used and exploited by Russia to share disinformation that attacks the EU institutions and causes polarization,” Gori said.

Pallavi Sethi, a climate change misinformation policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, said climate is just the latest in a string of issue some far-right politicians have targeted to stoke division. Before climate, it was migration.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), for example, has weaponized the debate around heat pumps. When the ruling coalition government proposed phasing out home heating systems running on methane gas, the AfD branded them an “eco-dictatorship” and made the issue a key part of its campaign, despite scientific evidence showing the climate benefits of electrifying heating.

“Right-wing populism political ideology often emphasizes the rights of ordinary citizens and demonizes the ‘corrupt elite’ — the governments who want to do something about climate change, who are forming these climate policies, and the scientific community that is providing evidence,” she said.

The EU’s answer to the problem has been its Digital Services Act, which specifically targets illegal content, misleading advertising and disinformation. It has been using the new legislation to force big social media companies to clean up their platforms. Most recently, the European Commission — part of the EU’s executive government — opened formal proceedings against Facebook and Instagram over disinformation targeting the European election.

And last month, the EU imposed sanctions on the Prague-based Voice of Europe, an online media outlet that it accused of running a pro-Russian influence operation. Voice of Europe could not be reached as its contact page shows an error message.

But these efforts can only go so far to address what has become an enormous problem. Climate Action Against Disinformation, an international coalition of groups, said the response by social media companies and governments has been woefully inadequate.

CNN in February reported on a fake AI-generated audio recording of a top candidate in Slovakia “admitting” he would rig the parliamentary elections, which was published on Facebook just days before a key vote last fall.

A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in a statement at the time: “Our independent fact-checking network reviews and rates misinformation — including content that’s AI-generated — and we label it and down-rank it in feed so fewer people see it.”

While the statement said content that violates company policies is removed, it did not address why some posts containing the Slovak deepfake were not marked as false.

Facebook has removed content that breaches its policies for several years, but it does not automatically remove content just because it has been doctored or generated by AI. Instead, it aims to label altered content as such.

Its community standards policy in the past had only targeted video, but in April, it was expanded to include audio.

In Slovakia, however, the damage may have already been done. The candidate targeted — a pro-Western politician — was defeated by another with close ties to Moscow.

“There was a flaw in how Meta — Facebook — looked at stuff. They would only take down things if it was a video that was doctored,” Wright said. “They had no policy on taking down doctored audio. That was a flaw, and they exploited it.”

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