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.
Bret Schafer Joins Background Briefing to Discuss How Top US Conservatives Push Pro-Kremlin Narratives on Ukraine
Bret Schafer joins Background Briefing with Ian Masters to examine who is giving aid and comfort to the enemy or who is a useful idiot and expand on his quotes in an article at The Guardian “Top US conservatives pushing Russian spin on Ukraine war, [...]
Oh, the Irony…Russia Spreads Disinformation about Polish Annexation of Western Ukrainian Regions
Days after an errant Ukrainian missile tragically killed two civilians in Poland, Russian state-sponsored media began reporting on a strange conspiracy theory—that Poland wants to annex three counties in western Ukraine. ASD at GMF’s Yandex Dashboar [...]
Hamilton Toplines: November 16–29, 2022
Hamilton 2.0 is an interactive tool that monitors the outputs of Chinese and Russian state media and government officials across a range of social media platforms. The weekly report provides a summary analysis of the most salient topics and narrativ [...]
Hamilton Monthly Report: October 2022
This report highlights and analyzes key trends and takeaways from data collected by the Hamilton 2.0 dashboard during the previous month. Unlike ASD’s weekly Hamilton reports, which analyze the main topics and themes promoted by monitored Russian an [...]
Moscow’s Mixed Messages: How Setbacks in Ukraine Split Messaging among Once-Unified Kremlin Loyalists
While Russian information operators in government and state-sponsored media presented a relatively united front at the onset of the renewed invasion of Ukraine, setbacks during the war have caused significant divergences in messaging. Ukraine’s succ [...]
Hamilton Toplines: November 9–15, 2022
Hamilton 2.0 is an interactive tool that monitors the outputs of Chinese and Russian state media and government officials across a range of social media platforms. The weekly report provides a summary analysis of the most salient topics and narrativ [...]
Josh Rudolph in Just Security: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Fight Can Overcome US Skeptics
Likely Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives poses a potential obstacle for support to Ukraine. Key members of the potential incoming House caucus and outside influencers have suggested resistance to further aid. That is not only [...]
Hamilton Toplines: November 2–8, 2022
Russia Monitored Russian accounts tweeted 17,045 times from November 2 to November 8, earning 185,885 retweets and 539,333 likes. Kremlin-linked Twitter accounts did not conduct a large-scale messaging push around the US midterm elections. Even on t [...]
Josh Rudolph Discusses Marshall Plan for Ukraine on the Power Vertical Podcast
What will it take to rebuild Ukraine when the war is over? A report released in September by the World Bank, Ukrainian government, and the European Commission estimates that Russia’s unprovoked invasion has already caused more than $97 billion in d [...]
Zack Cooper in Fulcrum: The Fundamental Tension in Biden’s National Security Strategy
The Biden administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS) on 12 October 2022, almost two years after Biden’s inauguration. Carefully drafted and relatively straightforward, the strategy asserts that the world “is at an inflection point [...]
David Levine Breaks Down Foreign Interference in Elections with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Is the public discussion in our democracies an open dialogue, or do malicious actors manipulate the debate for their own purposes? META (the owners of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) published a report in September 2022 about “Coordinated Inauthen [...]
Hamilton Toplines: October 19–25, 2022
Russia Monitored Russian accounts tweeted 17,602 times from October 19 to October 25, receiving 209,202 retweets and 619,552 likes. “Dirty bomb” was the most used key phrase in tweets by Russian diplomats and state media for three days after Defe [...]