With the Paris Olympics approaching and snap elections liable to deliver a new government, disinformation campaigns targeting France have gone into overdrive, cybersecurity experts warn. Many suspect that Russia is ultimately to blame.
The French government cybersecurity watchdog, Viginum, released a new report last week detailing the risks ahead for the 2024 Games.
"Digital information manipulation campaigns have become a veritable instrument of destabilisation of democracies," it said.
"This global event will give untold informational exposure to malevolent foreign actors."
Viginum did not name Russia in its report, but since June 2023 it has published multiple reports singling out Russian efforts to sow divisions in France and elsewhere.
'Ecosystem' of disinformation
The Russian campaigns sowing anti-French disinformation began online early last summer but first became tangible in October 2023, when more than 1,000 bots linked to Russia relayed photos of graffitied Stars of David in Paris and its suburbs.
A French intelligence report said the Russian intelligence agency FSB ordered the tagging, as well as subsequent vandalism of a memorial to those who helped rescue Jews from the Holocaust.
Photos from each event were amplified on social media by fake accounts linked to the Russian disinformation site RRN, according to cybersecurity experts.
Russia denies any such campaigns. The French intelligence report says RRN is part of a larger operation orchestrated by Sergei Kiriyenko, a ranking Kremlin official.
“You have to see this as an ecosystem,” said a French military official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. “It’s a hybrid strategy”.
The tags and the vandalism had no direct link to Russia's war in Ukraine, but they provoked a strong reaction from the French political class, with denunciations in the legislature and public debate.
Sapping support for Ukraine
In March, just after Macron discussed the possibility of mobilising the French military in Ukraine, a fake recruitment drive went up for the French army in Ukraine, spawning a series of posts in Russian- and French-language Telegram channels that got picked up in Russian and Belarusian media, according to a separate French government report.
On 1 June, caskets appeared outside the Eiffel Tower, bearing the inscription “French soldiers in Ukraine”.
The larger disinformation efforts show little traction in France, but the Russian audience may have been the real target, officials say, by showing that Russia’s war in Ukraine is – as Russian President Vladimir Putin has said – really a war with the West.
Among the broader goals is a long-term and steady effort to sow social discord, erode faith in the media and democratic governments, undermine NATO, and sap Western support for Ukraine.
Olympics caught in crossfire
Denigrating the Olympics, from which most Russian athletes are banned, is a bonus, according to French officials monitoring posts warning of imminent unrest ahead of the Games.
On 9 June, the French far-right National Rally (RN) trounced Macron’s party in elections for the European Parliament, prompting the president to call snap parliamentary elections.
The RN has historically been close to Russia: its figurehead Marine Le Pen has cultivated ties to Putin for many years and supported Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
In more than 4,400 posts gathered since mid-November by antibot4navalny, a collective that analyses Russian bot behaviour, those targeting audiences in France and Germany predominated.
The number of weekly posts ranged from 100 to 200 except for the week of 5 May, when it dropped near zero, the data showed. That week, as it happens, was a holiday in Russia.
(with AP)
