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Russia’s ‘Digital Army’ Waging Covert Online War Against Ukraine and Its Allies

Russia’s war on Ukraine is not only fought on the battlefield. Through their “digital army”—a vast network of bots, covert online campaigns, and paid influencers—Moscow is flooding social media with disinformation to undermine Ukraine, divide Europe, and destabilize democracies.
“Russia is waging a global war of disinformation in an attempt to justify its heinous crimes against Ukraine and influence discourse about the war in its favour, including by using false historical narratives to delegitimise Ukraine and falsely labelling Ukrainians as Nazis or Nazi sympathisers,” said the European Parliament (EP) in a resolution adopted on January 23, 2025, against “Russia’s disinformation and historical falsification,” passing with 480 votes in favor.
Russia seeks to destabilize democracies and divide Europe through social media or corrupt political actors, using largely covert online sources, networks of bots, and paying influencers to reproduce disinformation, the EP stated in their resolution. In June 2024 alone, there were 1,400 fake pro-Russian accounts on X, reaching 4.5 million users.
The battle against deception, disinformation, and misinformation requires collective action, transparency, and an unwavering commitment to truth.
Disinformation knows no borders. It’s spread worldwide far quicker and easier than troops on the ground, making it an integral player in Russia’s war of aggression.
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Social Media
“We are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model” on Facebook and Instagram, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on January 7, 2025. Meta stated that their platforms allow free expression, where “billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly on display”.
In their recent motion, the EP expressed “deep concern” about the recent Meta announcements concerning relaxing their rules on fact-checking, and how this will further enable Russia’s disinformation campaign around the world.
Meta said that they “didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth.”
The EP “calls for stricter transparency for political advertising”, as well as “for action against profit-driven algorithms based on personalisation, clicks and interaction, which amplify hatred and lies over truth.”
I sometimes compare the threat of disinformation with a creature where the online platforms and infrastructure are the nervous system and the money – it’s a blood circulation system. We will never kill the creature completely, but we can certainly make it weaker and less dominant in our information space.
Sandra Kalniete
European People's Party Group
In April 2024, the European Commission opened a formal investigation into whether Meta breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in their handling of political content, including a suspected Russian influence campaign, citing findings from an external non-profit research organization, AI Forensics.
At the time, Meta was moderating less than 5% of their political ads, meaning the rules that they were subjected to were not enforced allowing pro-Russian propaganda and financial scams to thrive in the EU, according to AI Forensics in their report “No Embargo In Sight”.
AI Forensics investigation highlighted a significant loophole in the moderation of political advertisements on Meta platforms. Uncovering a “sprawling pro-Russian influence operation that exploits these moderation failures, risking the integrity of democratic processes in Europe”, they stated in their report.
Between August 2023 and March 2024, AI Forensics detected more than 3800 pages, reaching over 38 million accounts, weaponizing news events such as the “farmers protests and military aid packages, to undermine support for Ukraine and institutional support in the EU.”
Between August 2023 and November 2024, Meta was paid $338,000 to place at least 8,000 pieces of sponsored content pushing “messages hostile to European aid to Ukraine and other so-called sponsored content”, according to an investigation “Influence By Design” by AI Forensics, Check First and Reset Tech, published in January 2025.
They found that Russia’s IT organization Social Design Agency (SDA) authored the propaganda advertisements, after the SDA was sanctioned by the European Union in July 2023, the US Treasury Department in March 2024, and the UK in October 2024.
“The inclusion of the SDA on international sanctions lists was intended to curb its malign influence operations. Despite these sanctions, Meta continued to review, approve and distribute advertisements linked to the SDA. This raises critical legal concerns regarding compliance with international sanctions frameworks, including restrictive measures and sanctions regimes imposed by the EU, US, and UK”, the investigation reported.
The EP “calls for stricter transparency for political advertising”, as well as “for action against profit-driven algorithms based on personalisation, clicks and interaction, which amplify hatred and lies over truth.”
Russia’s ‘digital army’
Thousands of documents from the SDA were leaked and shared with investigative journalists such as the non-profit independent organization, VSquare. The leak revealed how the SDA operates as a center for psychological warfare, its “army” consisting of meme creators and internet trolls, employing “ideologists”, eight “commentators,” and a “bot farm operator.”
“Farming is a beloved pastime for millions of Russians.” — said the RT press office, in response to allegations that RT created an AI-enabled bot farm to spread disinformation.
In the first four months of 2024, the SDA’s bot army, dubbed the “Russian Digital Army,” generated 33.9 million comments, and 39,899 “content units” on social media, including 4,641 videos and 2,516 memes and graphics, according to VSquare.
Public opinion in the project’s target countries is gradually moving towards reducing or completely stopping support for Ukraine.
Russian Digital Army
Several SDA agents confirmed that their “digital army” was particularly active in Germany, supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Another document, “Register of Fakes and Doppelgangers,” lists 73 instances where the SDA created disinformation for distribution.
“Our new team fabricated a story about child abductions. The Americans seriously published it. That’s a success!” boasted Sofia Zakharova, head of the Development of Information and Communication Technologies department. Zakharova is now sanctioned by the EU for her involvement.
We at UNITED24 Media have also been consistently targeted through fake social media campaigns created by Russian propagandists. Countless videos featuring completely fabricated stories have been made using our logo, implying that we are the source of this information. The latest fake video was reported by the Center for Countering Disinformation on 30 January 2025.
🔴 Russian propaganda channels are spreading fake video using UNITED24 Media brand identity.
— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) January 30, 2025
UNITED24 Media had no involvement in its creation, and the claims in the video are false. https://t.co/4QaFXdq3rT
The DoppelGänger operation
Since at least May 2022, the DoppelGänger campaign infiltrated Europe’s media landscape by disseminating pro-Russian disinformation through a network of cloned websites, fake articles, and social media manipulation.
Investigations found that DoppelGänger’s digital footprints led directly to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, operated by the SDA and Structura National Technologies.
At least 17 media organizations, including Bild, The Guardian, and RBC Ukraine, had their websites duplicated with a fake version to spread DoppelGänger’s pro-Russian narratives. Official government organizations such as NATO, the German Ministry of Interior, and the French Ministry of Public Affairs were also cloned.
DoppelGänger’s pro-Russian narratives included:
Depicting Ukraine negatively: Smearing Ukraine as a failed, corrupt, and Nazi state.
Promoting Kremlin narratives: Denying the Bucha massacre and spreading Kremlin-approved war narratives.
Fearmongering across Europe: Targeting Germans, Italians, French, Latvians, and British citizens, claiming that sanctions against Russia will ruin their lives.
“nato[.]ws” domain: This fake site was used to mimic the official NATO website, spreading false press releases while also including legitimate links to the real NATO site for credibility.
For example, “press releases made false claims that NATO members had agreed to double the alliance’s military budget and that NATO members were considering deploying Ukrainian paramilitary troops to France to suppress protests,” according to the US Government Cyber Command who have since seized all DoppelGänger’s websites and halted their operations.

There are 4 key elements to distributing disinformation in the operation, according to EuDisinfo Lab, disinformation experts. Insikt Group, a threat research division comprising analysts and security researchers with deep government, law enforcement, military, and intelligence agency experience published an indepth report on Russia’s DoppelGänger tactics.
Amplification through comments of fake personas
Amplification on other platforms
Buying ads with networks of fake Facebook pages
Dissimulation/ Operational Security / Geofencing
Between May 2023 – July 2024, for only 2 servers identified, German intelligence found that DoppelGänger ran a total of 7983 campaigns and 828 842 clicks (an average of 103 clicks per campaign) reported EuDisinfo:
Germany | 2250 campaigns | 250 061 clicks | ||
France | 2245 campaigns | 249 481 clicks | ||
US | 1339 campaigns | 148 777 clicks | ||
Ukraine | 1339 campaigns | 148 777 clicks | ||
Israel | 221 campaigns | No click figures | ||
Poland | 118 campaigns | No click figures | ||
Italy | 89 campaigns | No click figures |
Individuals running the operation have been placed on the EU sanctions list. “All those designated are subject to an asset freeze and EU citizens and companies are forbidden from making funds available to them. Natural persons are additionally subject to a travel ban, which prevents them from entering or transiting through EU territories” the EU Council reported.
Language as a weapon of war
"One of the former Ukrainian leaders said once that Ukraine was not Russia. This concept must disappear forever. Ukraine certainly is Russia," Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on March, 4, 2024 in a lecture at the Knowledge First educational marathon, Russian state media reported.
Paying attention to the Russian Federation's language reveals their political, long-term aims and plans.
Kostia Gorobets
Assistant Professor in the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies, University of Groningen.
The EP condemns the Russian regime’s systematic falsification and use of distorted historical arguments. They highlight that the “Russian regime denies Ukraine’s distinct national identity, falsely claiming it as part of the Russian world (‘Russkiy mir’), a narrative rooted in imperialistic ideology.”
The most obvious polarization in reporting about the war is how it is initially addressed. In Western media, the war is described as a “full-scale invasion” or “illegal invasion” whereas, in Russia, they call this a “special military operation”.
Experts have highlighted different meanings behind Russia’s term “special military operation,” and how Moscow is insistent on using specific phrases for political reasons and to achieve their political goals.
Russia is trying to rebuild its empire, and “the language and logic of an empire relies on inequality and subordination,” explains Gorobets. “There is no place for war within the empire because the very concept of war assumes equality in status.”
Gorobets also explains that “special military operation” implies state authorities conducting an operation, like the police, that Russia is using force within its own domain, of which their false narrative states, Ukraine is but a part.

Russia has also used this language in other wars its wages against other nations;
The First Chechen War: “Operation on the restoration of the constitutional order in Chechnya”
The Second Chechen War: “Counter-terrorist operation on the territory of Northern Caucasus region”
The Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008: “Peace enforcement operation”
The use of the term "war" is prohibited in Russian media, and violating this law can lead to a prison sentence of up to 15 years or more.
In this article, published by the Kremlin in 2021, one year before the full-scale invasion, Russia’s leader Putin claimed that Ukraine belongs to Russia—“We are one people,” he stated. He further wrote that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” and that the statement “Ukraine is not Russia, is no longer an option.”
Russian authorities consider Ukraine to be a “fake country.” Therefore, the Kremlin and Russian media have been careful not to use the term “invasion.” Likely in a bid to uphold their political goals through language – “How could you invade a country that belonged to you, to begin with?” Gorobets wrote in his research.
“The Russian regime has been making widespread use of disinformation, including based on distorted historical arguments, and foreign information manipulation and interference in an attempt to justify its crime of aggression” the EP resolution stated.
The EP “calls strongly for the EU and its Member States to further increase and coordinate their efforts, including with like-minded partners, to promptly and rigorously counter Russian disinformation… actively promoting media literacy and by supporting quality media and professional journalism, in particular investigative journalism that uncovers Russian propaganda, its methods and networks.”