City of Angels 25: Russia created, then questioned fake news reports, using Operation Matrioska to sway recent French election, France 24 Truth or Fake report TRANSCRIPT

(“Not only was the video entirely false, but Bots from Russia who produced it then sent the video to us, asking us to investigate. "Operation Matryoshka," or Russian doll, wastes fact checkers’ time, diverts journalists’ attention, and muddies those waters of information.” TRANSCRIPT of “Here’s how Moscow’s fake news machine tried to interfere with French elections” from FRANCE 24 last month, link at bottom.) ("It can happen here," says Blogger Kay.)

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A very good evening to you, in this episode we're going to discuss how our Channel, France 24, is being targeted by Russian disinformation campaigns. This on the back of the French parliamentary elections last [month] and there were fears of Russian interference spreading fake news about the vote. Verica, tell us more.

Yes Mark that's right over the last few years, in fact, the France Observers have been closely monitoring attempts to disinform and spread false information, and over the last few months we've certainly seen Moscow LED fake news campaigns ramp up, many of which which we have covered here on Truth or Fake as well.

But I think the best way is to just show you some examples of this Russian interference on the back of the French legislative elections which we saw this weekend.

Now this is the real website for Ensemble that is the macron Le Coalition in the legis legislative election campaign and this is a fake one up by the Russian disinformation machine. And we can see that it looks remarkably similar.

And the claim on this one from this fake website is that if you vote for president MC's Ensemble party, you are eligible to get a €100 bonus, in fact, from this vote, which of course is completely fake.

Now another thing that is very interesting here is the attempts that have gone into making this look legitimate. Now this is the real real URL for the Ensemble website and this is the fake one, and we can see they are absolutely very very similar. So that there's a huge amount of effort there that has gone into emulating that as closely as possible in order to disinform.

The next example I will show you is this website. This is lafanson. We have mentioned this very recently in fact here on Truth or Fake as well.

This has been named by a cyber security cyber security study just last month as a Russian source of disinformation. It is part of Operation Doppelganger Operation False Facade Operation Copy Cop.

These are a range of names that explain a Russian campaign that uses fake news by impersonating legitimate media in order to spread those false narratives.

So that website is made entirely to disinform.

And previously we talked about how most of the articles on this use artificial intelligence as well, they're all written by artificial intelligence. And indeed we can see flat bang in the middle there that fake story about voting for mol's party getting you €100 now, as well, as part of Operation Doppelganger.

And this way of using real of impersonating real media we've also seen television, French television media, also impersonated as well.

This this post on X appeared on the website just a day before the legislative elections, and in it we can see- let me make it a little bit bigger so it's clearer- we can see four different French channels that have been impersonated. Here we've got this in this corner we've got TFR we've got our sister radio channel RFI we've also got us here in the corner complete with all the logos as you can see and lefigaro.

And these fake videos were all made in that social media style, all spreading complete falsehoods on a range of subjects, general Paris disinformation of course. That's very meaningful in the runup to the Paris Olympics this summer as well as this example this one is particularly significant.

This one by leig because it was the most direct in trying to influence the legislative election, so this video alleged that a gay couple tried to set fire to the cathedral to protest against M's National Rally party coming out on top.

In the first round of those legislative elections of course this never happened. Leigo never made this video and is it is entirely fake.

But of course Mark. These are just a few examples of how the Russian interference machine is operating, by mimicking existing media in order to spread those falsehoods.

It does look very convincing doesn't it as you point out. And you also mentioned V that our Channel France 24 has also been targeted by these fake news operations. Tell us more about that.

Yes, that's right. When I mentioned several names of Russian disinformation campaigns, there is another one that has been documented since last year. And that is this one Operation Matrioska.

The point of this campaign is to bombard fact checking services, such as us here Truth or Fake and the France Observers, and bombard us to verify fake news that has been created by those people, by this disinformation campaign themselves. Now to illustrate this point now- this might be a little bit like Inception here but-

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France Observers have absolutely been bombarded by emails like this telling us about these fake videos that we're allegedly putting out,

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To illustrate this point I'm going to show you this fake video of me that was actually found circulating on different Russian Telegram circles. Now if we watch that video, this might be a little bit trippy for the viewers at home, but they have used the France 24 logo they've even used the France 24 the truth or fake jingle there, absolutely, my name and an extract of a previous episode that I have done here.

In it they confirm that I allegedly said here on this very set that pathogenic diseased mushrooms are found in 18 out of 20 hotels in Paris.

Now I assure you I have never done this episode. Indeed, at the end of the video in fact, there is a direct quote allegedly from me that I’ve never said. And it uses a very old clip from work that I have absolutely not done here on France 24, it is done elsewhere.

So not only is this entirely false but more shocking is that is that Russian Bots afterwards then sent this video to us amongst several others telling us about it, asking us to investigate it.

Now there's two parts to Operation Matrioska. The first is to generate these fake news impersonations that real media have to have to come out and speak out against and to verify and correct. But the second is to spam those videos online using Bots and also saturate real media inboxes into telling them to investigate it.

So France Observers have absolutely been bombarded by emails like this telling us about these fake videos that we're allegedly putting out. The goal here is to waste fact Checkers’ time, divert journalists attention, and waste our resources, and absolutely muddy those Waters of information.

I can confirm directly from the France 24 Observers, our factchecking service, that this is absolutely happening. But what I will make clear here is that despite all of these attempts to spread falsehoods, this is absolutely taking place.

And the most impact that this is having is in Russian media circles. We can see here that they're getting absolutely tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of views on Russian Telegram circles and pro-Russian accounts, but on Western media channels we can see here there is very little engagement, and so we can see the impact is not as great as they maybe would like it to be, Mark.

(auto-generated Transcript, edited for readability by blogger)

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