Are Russian intelligence agencies running a disinformation campaign to influence US voters?

Russia has been spreading misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic in the United States as election season nears, reports claim.

First reported by the New York Times, the report refers to declassified intelligence which claims that the Russian military intelligence, or the GRU, may have tied up with this resource centres like InfoRos to peddle misinformation regarding the pandemic.

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Virus made in the USA?

The narrative pushed out by such agencies includes speculations of the virus being created by the US military, and claiming that Russia’s medical prowess could help the US.

Similar efforts were allegedly made by Russia in 2016, employing social media accounts and “bots” of the Internet Research Agency to pitch false information.

Just last week, US intelligence rang alarm bells by claiming that Russia, China, and Iran intend to interfere with the upcoming elections. To this, Democrats said there were no specifics, but that more information would be shared soon.

The pandemic is not the only swaying factor for misinformation. Allegedly, Russia is conducting an influence campaign in Eastern Europe to discredit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Mandiant Threat Intelligence found that such campaigns were “aligned with Russian security interests”.

Recently, social media giant Facebook began labelling stories that emerge from state news outlets like RT and Sputnik.

Scattered across the web

InfoRos is where most of these reports were published. The site is currently controlled by the Russian government. Another web portal - OneWorld.Press was found to be pushing propaganda, and had ties to the GRU, the Russian equivalent of the CIA.

Besides false information on the pandemic, a think tank has been amplifying Russian narratives in the US, and is also currently under investigation by the FBI.

Called The Strategic Culture Foundation, it depends largely on the SVR, another Russian intelligence agency.

OneWorld.Press responded to NYT and claimed that this information was “categorically false” in a statement. It further claimed how people from the “deep state” were trying to make Trump lose in the upcoming elections.

Many officials told the publication that GRU’s psychological warfare anti - Unit 54777, may be behind the propaganda.

NYT found that between May to early June, 150 such articles with misleading information were published on websites like InfoRos, OneWorld, and Tass.

One of these claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic is an experiment to taint the world, while another claimed how the US was using the pandemic to impose its worldview. After Beijing claimed that COVID-19 was a biological weapon from the US, a publication ran this piece as well.

The EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit organisation had earlier claimed that OneWorld and InfoRos have links to Russia.