France: Pro-Russian campaigns' preferred target

As France continues to support Ukraine, millions of pro-Russian contents are currently flooding the web, attempting to destabilise this alliance.

These digital influence campaigns particularly target France, whose support for Kyiv is crucial. On April 17 and 18, several reports were published by DFRLab and CheckFirst, organisations specialised in online manipulations. The researchers detail the scale of these influence operations.

Also Germany and Ukraine

French authorities and researchers have identified several manipulation attempts by the network of sites “Pravda”, a conduit for pro-Russian propaganda. Articles making reference to alleged “humiliations” of the French head of state, fake polls reporting that the French prefer the Russian President Vladimir Putin to Macron, and hundreds of contents on sensitive topics (migrations, sexual violence…) flood the Internet.

As reported by the media 20 Minutes, among the 3.7 million articles published by Pravda (spread over nearly 200 sites targeting different countries or regions) since August 2023, 394,400 targeted France, 376,700 Germany and 270,300 Ukraine.

(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: 20 Minutes - Illustration: ©Unsplash)