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.
ASD at GMF Launches Dashboard Tracking Russian Military Bloggers on Telegram
New War in Ukraine Dashboard tracks messaging from Russia’s military bloggers on Telegram Washington, D.C. – The Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States today launched the War in Ukraine: Military Bloggers da [...]
5 Takeaways from the War in Ukraine: Military Bloggers Dashboard
Over the course of the war in Ukraine, a loose network of Russian military bloggers on Telegram have provided a fervently nationalistic, though at times highly critical, view of Russia’s “special military operation”. Providing more unfiltered covera [...]
Russian State Media Is Not Rushing to Threads Despite Platform’s Lax Regulations
Meta’s Twitter-alternative, Threads, became the fastest app to reach 100 million users. It took five days. The app itself only took seven months to build, a remarkably short start-to-launch period that did not allow the few dozen engineers working o [...]
Josh Rudolph in MSNBC: Yevgeny Prigozhin Embodies the Rot Putin Wants to Force Back on Ukraine
While corruption has undermined Russia's war effort, anti-corruption efforts have made Ukraine more resilient. The abortive rebellion by Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, has only rein [...]
Russia Floods Twitter with Propaganda about the Kakhovka Dam’s Collapse
Overview In the early hours of June 6, an explosion collapsed the Kakhovka dam, releasing a torrent of water across the Ukrainian countryside and igniting a blame game across social media. Evidence collected by the New York Times indicates that Russ [...]
ASD Data on Russian Propaganda on Dam Collapse Covered Exclusively in The Record
Russian officials and diplomats have been coordinating an unusually organized and large-scale disinformation campaign to discredit reports that the nation is responsible for the June 6 collapse of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, according to a new study. Disi [...]
Russia Didn’t Know How to Frame the Discord Leaks
Overview On April 13, the FBI arrested Jack Teixeira for his alleged involvement in leaking hundreds of classified documents. Teixeira, a member of the Air National Guard, reportedly shared the US intelligence assessments with his friends over the c [...]
Joseph Bodnar Discusses the Discord Leaks on Background Briefing
Background Briefing with Ian Masters · Navy Vet Behind Pro-Putin Site that Doctored and Spread Documents Stolen by a National Guard Airman We look into the role of a recent member of the US Navy, Sarah Bils, who runs a pro-Putin social media site D [...]
David Salvo Discusses Russia’s Arrest of American Journalist Evan Gershkovich on Fox
David Salvo, managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF and a former State Department official in Russia, joined LiveNOW on FOX on Friday, March 31, to discuss the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Even Gershkovich in Russi [...]
AP Exclusive on ASD Research: TikTok Propaganda Labels Fall Flat in ‘Huge Win’ for Russia
A year ago, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, TikTok started labeling accounts operated by Russian state propaganda agencies as a way to tell users they were being exposed to Kremlin disinformation. An analysis a year later shows the policy ha [...]
TikTok’s Russia Challenge: Kremlin-Funded Media Reaches Millions on the App
Overview TikTok has been central to the world’s understanding of Russia’s war in Ukraine. It was particularly valuable in the conflict’s early days when people were desperate for news and able to find real-time updates about military maneuvers and o [...]
Turn East at the Crossroads: Analyzing Russian Rhetoric on Turkey-NATO Relations Following the Quran Burning in Sweden
NATO’s role in countering Russian aggression during the war in Ukraine has made the alliance a repeated target of Kremlin-linked propaganda campaigns. Central to this effort is an attempt by Russian state-affiliated media and diplomats to exploit or [...]