Russian Intelligence Services Spreading Disinformation about Covid-19

A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling American cities read “Chaos in the Blue Cities,” accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up under the tough-on-crime approach of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg “and have zero street smarts” must now “adapt to life in high-crime urban areas."

Another story carried the headline of “Ukrainian Trap for Biden,” and claimed that “Ukrainegate" — a reference to stories surrounding Joe Biden's son Hunter's former ties to a Ukraine gas company — “keeps unfolding with renewed vigor.”

US officials have identified two of the people believed to be behind the sites' operations: Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy.

The men previously held leadership roles at InfoRos but have also served in a GRU unit specializing in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials said.

InfoRos and One World’s ties to the Russian state have attracted scrutiny in the past from European disinformation analysts.

In 2019, a European Union task force that studies disinformation campaigns identified One World as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets.”

The task force noted that One World’s content often parrots the Russian state agenda on issues including the war in Syria.

A report published last month by a second nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence.

The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some financial connections between InfoRos and the government.

“InfoRos is evolving in a shady grey zone, where regular information activities are mixed with more controversial actions that could be quite possibly linked to the Russian state’s information operations,” the report’s authors concluded.

On its English-language Facebook page, InfoRos describes itself as an “Information agency: world through the eyes of Russia.” 

(Writers: Eric Tucker, David Klepper) 

Source: https://apnews.com/3acb089e6a333e051dbc4a465cb68ee1 

Associated Press writer David Klepper in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.