Nearly six months later, the number of sites promoting the same content has exploded as Russia has found ways around the ban. They have changed their job name to cover it up. They have outsourced some propaganda tasks to diplomats. And they’ve cut and pasted much of the content onto new sites — ones that until now had no obvious ties to Russia. NewsGuard, a New York-based company that studies and monitors online disinformation, has now identified 250 websites that are actively spreading Russian disinformation about the war, with dozens of new ones added in recent months. Claims on these sites include claims that Ukraine’s military has staged some deadly Russian attacks to gain global support, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is faking public appearances, or that Ukrainian refugees are committing crimes in Germany and Poland. Some of the sites present themselves as independent think tanks or news outlets. About half are English-speaking, while others are in French, German or Italian. Many were founded long before the war and were not obviously connected to the Russian government until they suddenly started parroting Kremlin talking points. “They may be creating sleeper sites,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz. Sleeper sites are sites created for a disinformation campaign that were largely dormant, slowly building an audience through innocuous or irrelevant posts and then switching to propaganda or disinformation at a set time. While NewsGuard’s analysis found that much of the disinformation about the war in Ukraine comes from Russia, it found instances of false claims with a pro-Ukrainian slant. They included claims of a hotshot ace fighter known as the Ghost of Kyiv that officials later admitted was a myth. YouTube, TikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, pledged to remove RT and Sputnik from their platforms within the European Union. However, researchers found that in some cases all Russia had to do to avoid the ban was to post from a different account. The Disinformation Status Center, a Europe-based coalition of disinformation researchers, found that some RT video content was appearing on social media with a new brand and logo. In the case of some video footage, the RT branding was simply removed from the video and reposted to a new YouTube channel not covered by the EU ban. More aggressive control of social media content could make it harder for Russia to circumvent the ban, according to Felix Kartte, senior adviser at Reset, a UK-based nonprofit that has funded the work of the Disinformation Situation Center and she is critical of the role of social media in democratic discourse. “Instead of putting effective content control systems in place, they are playing with the Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus,” Kartte said. YouTube’s parent company did not immediately respond to questions seeking comment on the ban. In the EU, officials are scrambling to shore up their defenses. This spring the EU passed legislation that would require tech companies to do more to root out misinformation. Companies that fail could face hefty fines. European Commission vice-president Vera Jourova last month called disinformation “a growing problem in the EU and we really need to take stronger measures”. The proliferation of sites spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine shows that Russia had a plan in case governments or tech companies tried to clamp down on RT and Sputnik. That means Western leaders and tech companies will have to do more than shut down a website or two if they hope to stem the flow of Kremlin disinformation. “The Russians are much smarter,” said NewsGuard’s other co-CEO, Steven Brill.
