Russia has long been waging operations against democracies using all of the asymmetric tools ASD tracks—information manipulation, cyberattacks, malign finance, civil society subversion, and state economic coercion. The Kremlin’s geographic scope in conducting operations to undermine democracy continues to expand and its tactics continue to evolve. Find ASD’s work on Russia’s attempts to interfere in democracies on this page.
Interference Matters
Catch Me If EU Can: How RT and Sputnik Evade EU Content Bans
Jessica Brandt and Josh Rudolph in Just Security: Outlaw Participation in Foreign Attacks on U.S. Elections
Nobody has suffered serious legal consequences for actively welcoming—some say aiding and abetting—Russian interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections, or for having asked the presidents of Ukraine and China to similarly interfere. One reason for th [...]
Josh Rudolph Discusses How the U.K. Can Combat Russian Dirty Money with Chatham House
Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph joined Chatham House for an event that explored how the Kremlin uses Russian money in London to exert influence over British politics. The United Kingdom has long attracted money from criminal and Kremlin-linked so [...]
24 Group: How Obscure News Sites Selectively Spread Pro-Kremlin Disinformation
In July 2020, fact-checking and news organizations across Europe and the United States picked up on an emerging disinformation campaign that alleged Ukrainian soldiers died after testing an experimental U.S. COVID-19 vaccine. The story, which was de [...]
Treasury Should Publish a National Corruption Risk Assessment
Summary Recommendation Within the first 100 days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Treasury Department should publish its first-ever National Corruption Risk Assessment about the financial networks of oligarchs and kleptocrats, reviewing case st [...]
Hamilton Toplines: February 8-14, 2021
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats highlighted various instances of alleged censorship by social media companies—a recurring theme in Russia’s external messaging. State media cited Twitter’s ban of Project Veritas as an example of politica [...]
Jessica Brandt Discusses Russia’s Evolving Foreign Interference with Atlantic Council
Head of Policy and Research Jessica Brandt joined the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and the Free Russia Foundation for Adapting and Evolving: Russian Foreign Interference, a conversation on Russia’s interference in U.S. domestic p [...]
Josh Rudolph Explains How the United States Can Combat Russian Kleptocracy on ‘The Power Vertical’
Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph joined "The Power Vertical" to discuss how the Biden administration can combat corruption and kleptocracy. Russia’s banks can be as dangerous as Russia’s tanks. Corruption is the new Communism. The Kremlin’s black [...]
Hamilton Toplines: February 1-7, 2021
In last week’s coronavirus vaccine developments, U.K. medical journal The Lancet published the results of a peer-reviewed study that placed Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine’s efficacy at a level comparable to that of leading Western vaccines. Russian stat [...]
Russia’s Affront on the News: How NewsFront’s Circumvention of Social Media Bans Demonstrates the Need for Vigilance
There has been a sizable public- and private-sector effort to rid the United States’ social media ecosystem of Kremlin disinformation since Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. But what happens to one of those Russian outlets when so [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 23-31, 2021
The Russian embassy in Mexico’s Twitter account received uncharacteristically high engagement last week after a January 25 phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during which they discu [...]
Q&A with Jamie Fly: What Do Russia’s Actions Against RFE/RL Mean for Media Freedom?
On January 27, a Russian court fined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and its Russian-language services for failing to comply with the country’s “foreign agent” law—with rulings on four more protocols expected in February and RFE/RL journali [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 16-22, 2021
While the weekend’s protests against the detention of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia fell outside of the week monitored, his arrest was accompanied by official statements characterizing Navalny as a criminal, crit [...]