The pro-Russian campaign investigated by the FBI attacks the king and the People’s Party

A Moscow-based company dedicated to massive campaigns of hoaxes and lies in the service of the Kremlin, investigated and sanctioned this year in the United States, has among its stated goals the destabilization of Spanish institutions with attacks on the head of the State and with support for parties to the right of the Popular Party. In one of the internal documents of this Russian company, called Social Design Agency, to which ABC had access, there is a list of European leaders on whom to focus their campaigns on social networks and other Internet forums, and Felipe VI appears in highlight. inside. The leaked documents, which include emails from internal employees, scripts, summaries and budgets, reveal that the Kremlin hired this external company to publish messages on the Internet that harm the institutions of four European Union countries: l Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The last two countries are considered in one of the documents as little explored in terms of disinformation, and the Social Design Agency sets as a priority to increase hoaxes and lies in both, in the service of the Kremlin, in the face of electoral processes such as like the last Europeans. The FBI, the American judicial police, investigated this company and others, recently sanctioned, led by a Russian named Ilya Gambashidze. Related News Standard No Putin’s strategy: harming European institutions to reduce support for Ukraine David Alandete New fake news campaign includes anti. -Semitic and anti-American attacks. A preparatory document for June’s European elections identifies Spain as the target of these campaigns, supporting, it says, far-right politicians and parties that oppose already institutional partisan structures. The document explicitly states that by feeding the right-wing People’s Party, Russia hopes to force it to negotiate with them and thus “resume cooperation with the Russian Federation”, to the detriment of aid to Ukraine. . These documents include action plans, specific campaigns, memes and images used, budgets in rubles and monitoring of their impact. In total, between January and April this year, the agency produced 39,899 pieces of content, including more than 30,000 publications and 4,600 videos. They appear in “The Fake Factory,” a leak of thousands of Social Design Agency files that was obtained and first reported by Süddeutsche Zeitung and Delfi Estonia, and to which ABC now has access. Memes created and posted by Russian accounts feature images critical of the United States, such as this drawing of a gas cylinder about to explode on the European flag. These images aim to promote anti-American sentiment among European citizens. There are several memes about Mexico in this document, particularly those that reflect critical positions towards Spain and Europe. One image shows pre-Hispanic pyramids rejecting euros and dollars, in another a Mexican in a hat and poncho rejects euros offered by a European. They are part of a campaign to promote anti-Spanish and anti-European sentiment in the North American country. Generally speaking, the documents reflect that Russia seeks to support on social networks, with memes and fake news, the parties which vote in Europe against Remain. or extend sanctions against Russia. In a document describing the general strategy, this Russian company says that the objectives agreed with the Russian state are to “lead a comprehensive counter-campaign against the liberal globalists, their platform and their prominent representatives before the elections to the European Parliament in European Parliament. countries most represented in this elected body: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland. This involves promoting parties to the right of the PP which weaken this formation, which Russia considers to be more solid in the military defense of Ukraine. The Russian agency clearly establishes its working methods: comments on social networks and other internet forums; spread creative memes and videos on messaging apps, copy mainstream and respected media outlets and use clones of their headlines to spread lies. They offer arguments to this effect based on those of prominent influencers who operate in Spain and other European Union countries. As one argument goes: “We must fear war and climate disasters… there is a food crisis and agriculture is being destroyed… war is leading Europe to economic ruin… militarists are turning Europe into a camp totalitarian military. » Anti-Semitic caricatures Among the thousands of images produced by the Russian agency serving the Kremlin, there are abundant caricatures that include anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as this representation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader, dressed as a Jew. and with a Nazi gesture. This document asserts that “all” of these accounts lend themselves to both the general discrediting of the policies of the European parliamentary majority and its leaders, mainly Ursula von der Leyen. The latter, President of the European Commission, belongs to the German Christian Democratic Union, affiliated with the European People’s Party. The content viewed by ABC, hundreds of them, is anti-Semitic and anti-Ukrainian. They portray EU leaders as belligerent militarists, enemies of peace, lackeys of Israel and the United States. It’s all part of a larger campaign identified by North American authorities as Doppleganger, which promotes support for far-right political parties. The EU and attempts to sow division in several documents, the Spanish party Vox is expressly mentioned, and in fact the employees of the Social Design Agency have set themselves the goal of disseminating in particular two of its slogans which they consider beneficial for an increase in the EU. the popularity of this party: “Let Spain become great again” and “Life, family and religion”. Added to this are other slogans supporting Alternative for Germany, the French National Front and the Hungarian Fidesz, all used in hundreds of messages destined to become popular on the networks. It does not appear in these documents that the parties supposed to benefit from this support, including Vox, were aware of it, and the contacts between them and Russia do not appear in the instruction either. Vox management denies any contact with the Russian regime. Related news standard No The European Commission assures that Russian interference in Spain continues. David Alandete Sánchez ignores a recent European Parliament resolution. This campaign to break the center right in Europe is so sophisticated. that the Russian consulting firm has an internal surveillance report made with information stolen from Meta, Facebook’s parent company. He claims that Spain is one of the countries where Russian propaganda is most widespread and where Russian efforts and investments are less than those devoted to France or Germany. In Spain, the topics identified for inserting messages containing Russian disinformation are: fraud, celebrities and coronavirus. The same report claims that fact-checkers in Spain actively ignore Russian propaganda – the site malasda.es is specifically mentioned – and that the problem “in Spain is therefore almost invisible”. The fact that the problem of Russian penetration into the networks is ignored in Spain leads to this conclusion: “We recommend extending the work of the project to the countries most active in the dissemination of information considered unreliable by opponents of Russia, namely Spain and Italy.

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