Early voting in Detroit, Michigan. JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP via Getty Images
How a Kremlin-linked group is trying to sway American votes
In recent months, pro-Russian groups switched from posting fake stories about Ukraine to targeting the Harris campaign, researchers say.
Several groups that traffic in pro-Kremlin stories across social media shifted their focus in recent months from attacking the Ukrainian government to undermining the Democratic nominee for president, 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 pro-Russian disinformation campaign that is trying to shift Western public opinion on Ukraine and NATO. Led by professors Patrick Warren and Darren Linvill, the research builds on investigations into Russia's Internet Research Agency.
That well-known group coordinates with more obscure ones—for example, the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice and the BRICS Journalist Association—to amplify stories that could turn Western audiences against Ukraine. The researchers call this “narrative laundering,” a process meant "to conceal the origins and sourcing of false or misleading information.”
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 of them between August 2023 and October 2024—can be very successful. The group published a false narrative about Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska's use of Western aid money; within one week, X users had created 52,732 posts about the story, accounting for “10.6% of the total conversation addressing Zelensky or Zelenska in that week,” the researchers said,
R-FBI recently turned their attention to the U.S. presidential election, to push false stories about Harris and running-mate Tim Walz.
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 ongoing military operations in both countries.