For the second time in a year, France officially condemns a Russian influence campaign targeting the national territory. Thursday November 9, the Quai d’Orsay publicly condemned the involvement of the Doppelganger disinformation network, or Recent Reliable Newsin the amplification and dissemination of photos of blue Stars of David tagged on walls in Paris and its close suburbs.
In its press release, French diplomacy explains that numerous accounts on social networks attributed “with a high degree of confidence” to the Doppelganger network amplified the photos of these tags, but above all that they were the first to propagate them online. The investigation was carried out by Viginum, the French organization combating influence operations.
As observed The worldat least two photos of the tags taken at night rue de Rocroy (10e arrondissement) had been massively distributed on Facebook and Twitter by Doppelganger accounts. If these automated accounts are crude, the photos distributed could not be found anywhere else, suggesting that they had been taken or received by a person linked to the disinformation network.
An ongoing investigation
The Quai d’Orsay specifies that its conviction relates specifically to the dissemination and amplification of these tags, while the very origin of the 250 Star of David stencils found in the Paris suburbs over the last ten days must be determined by a judicial investigation. Four people of Moldovan nationality (including a couple who were arrested) are suspected of being behind some of them.
The alleged sponsor of the operation, the pro-Russian Moldovan businessman Anatolii Prizenko, confirmed at Release having paid people to paint Stars of David on Parisian walls and assured that its aim was to ” sustain “ French Jews – a dubious claim, as Mr. Prizenko has published several anti-Semitic messages on social media. Contacted by The worldhe did not respond to questions about his possible links with intelligence services.
In Moscow, Russian diplomacy, for its part, refuted any link with these operations. “No, there was no external influence, it is not a diversion or a provocation”Russian diplomatic spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday during a press conference.
This is the second official condemnation from the Quai d’Orsay targeting Doppelganger, a long and vast online Russian influence operation which relies as much on fake news sites as on copies of French, German or even Ukrainians. This network distributes its content in particular using a network of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts, generally of very poor quality and with limited reach, but also by purchasing advertisements on Meta’s social network using fake pages.