The EU braces itself for Russian disinformation in the EU elections.

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In just over a month, citizens in 27 EU countries will elect 720 new EU parliamentarians. There is great concern that the election will be manipulated in various ways.

Three methods of manipulation stand out, notes Delphine Collard, who is deputy spokesperson for the European Parliament.

– One aims to undermine the election process through information about electoral fraud. The second is to try to reduce voter turnout. And the third is to increase polarization around certain topics.

Such topics include support for Ukraine, migration, the climate, the pandemic, gender equality and LGBTQ issues.

Delphine Collard, Deputy Spokesperson for the European Parliament. With the help of information campaigns, the EU Parliament wants to draw voters’ attention to misinformation that is now being spread. Photo: Alain Rolland

EU Parliament’s analysis based on a fresh rapport from the European Digital Media Observatory, Edmo, an EU-funded network of fact-checkers. The network has reviewed all national elections in Europe last year, and determined that there was widespread misinformation about the election processes themselves in all countries.

In Estonia, a false report was spread that Ukrainian refugees were allowed to vote, in Spain that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s party stopped a train to prevent passengers from voting, and in Slovakia, a fake, AI-generated audio clip circulated in which a party leader says the election is rigged.

Ahead of the EU elections on June 9, there have been no signs of misinformation about electoral fraud in Sweden, says Åsa Larsson, who works at Källkritikbyrån – so far, anyway.

– If something comes, it will come in the coming weeks, she believes.

This type of disinformation – which aims to make voters lie on the couch instead of voting, or that there will be protests after the election – is most common in the weeks before the election and the period immediately after, writes the EU’s foreign service in a rapport about foreign manipulation.

Åsa Larsson, journalist and fact checker at Källkritikbyrån, which is the extension of Viralgranskaren, in the now defunct newspaper Metro. Källkritikbyrån examines, among other things, claims that are spread on Facebook, on behalf of Meta. Photo: Gustav Gräll

The Swedish Source Criticism Agency reviews claims that are spread online and participate in the Nordic section of the EU network Edmo.

Åsa Larsson mentions two current phenomena in Sweden, which by all accounts are part of larger disinformation campaigns against the whole of Europe.

Since last winter, she and her European colleagues have received tips, several a week, which are worded the same.

– There are often things that are negative for France. They want us to look up something about bed bug outbreaks, water quality in the Seine and the Olympics in Paris, but also things about Ukrainian refugees.

What could be the purpose of this?

– Partly it can be about amplification (reinforcement). Even if we come to the conclusion that a claim is wrong or distorted, we contribute to exposure if we write about it. For one thing, it takes our time and resources. But luckily we talk to each other, and became aware that this is some kind of campaign, she says.

Another phenomenon is the newly started site www.pravda-se.com. It popped up in Sweden at the same time as corresponding sites in 18 other EU countries, as well as some countries in Asia and Africa – and all have the same IP address in Russia.

The Swedish website contains news about Sweden, the EU, Russia and Ukraine. But the texts seem machine translated, says Åsa Larsson.

– It is very cleverly made. And it pumps out articles, every hour, 24/7, with a very distinct Russian perspective.

Screenshot from www.pravda-se.com on May 2, 2024. In most EU countries, as well as countries in the Western Balkans, in Africa and Asia, the same websites have appeared, at the same time, and with the same Russian IP address. Photo: Sigrid Melchior

The purpose of the site is still shrouded in obscurity, but there are various theories, says Åsa Larsson, who has been in contact with the Agency for Psychological Defense and a researcher at the Total Defense Research Institute. Either the website is part of an infrastructure that will be used to spread misinformation at a later stage, or it is a matter of method development.

– At the moment the site just spins. The articles don’t seem to go anywhere, because they have no distribution in social media. So at the moment it doesn’t work. But what happens if you bring in staff who know the language? says Åsa Larsson.

Several Russian influence campaigns have come to light in recent years. The most recent, in March this year, was when Polish and Czech security services revealed a Russian operation against the EU Parliament, “Russiagate”. The hub was the website Voice of Europe, now closed, which among other things interviewed EU parliamentarians. A handful of EU members are also suspected of taking bribes.

Since 2022, a Russian disinformation campaign named Doppelgänger has been operating, above all in France, Germany, Ukraine and the United States. Copies of government websites and major media houses, such as the French Foreign Ministry and the American Fox News, have been created, and these have published false information.

On X (formerly Twitter) a fake account was created for German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who wrote, among other things, in September 2023 that “the war in Ukraine will be over in three months” – a tweet that pro-Russian accounts subsequently spread in Ukraine.

– Our democratic systems are very vulnerable when it comes to how we deal with this type of threat. We are dealing with motivated, well-financed actors who have the capacity to manipulate the debate on the Internet and disrupt free and fair elections, said Alexandre Alaphilippe, who heads the Brussels-based think tank EUdesinfoLab, and which participated in exposing Doppelgänger.

Alexandre Alaphilippe, head of the Brussels-based think tank EUdesinfoLab, which researches narratives and disinformation techniques. Photo: Private

Washington Post was able to reveal in February of this year how the Doppelgänger campaign and the like are controlled, through internal documents from weekly meetings between political strategists close to the Kremlin, which the intelligence service of a European country came across.

A presentation shows how a Facebook post about the family of a dead Ukrainian soldier not receiving any help from the state was seen by over two million accounts in Ukraine.

Through the documents ges a unique insight into the disinformation economy: employees of Russian troll factories, who pump out around a hundred comments on social media daily, earn the equivalent of 6,600 kroner a month. At the same time, the price tag for planting pro-Russian opinion texts in reputable Western European media’s debate pages is just under SEK 400,000.

Alexandre Alaphilippe tells us that the Doppelgänger campaign spreads several narratives at the same time. One is that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and his wife are corrupt. One such article is about Zelenskyi planning to buy a house from Britain’s King Charles.

Another narrative is that France is ill-equipped for the Olympics this summer, with articles about crashed booking sites and an invasion of bedbugs – so much the same stories that abound in the campaign now directed at European fact-checkers.

Sources in the EU institutions mentions Germany and France as particularly vulnerable. Partly because large parties in both countries question the support for Ukraine, and partly because the countries are the most powerful in the EU – and the EU supports Ukraine in the war.

– We must understand that this is an extension of the conflict. It is about trying to block and paralyze democratic countries. If they cannot make decisions, they also cannot reach agreements on, for example, support for Ukraine. It’s really about “the long game”, that this can affect what happens on the battlefield in Ukraine, says Alexandre Alaphilippe.

Facts. EU sanctions against Russian disinformation

In July last year, the EU countries’ 27 foreign ministers clubbed sanctions against the Russian individuals and companies that could be linked to the Doppelgänger campaign.

Ahead of the next sanctions package against Russia, drivers France’s government that the EU also imposes sanctions on those behind the newly started Pravda sites.

The European Commission is expected to present the next sanctions package for EU countries’ ambassadors on Wednesday.

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