Russia’s latest disinformation tactic takes advantage of American celebrities

The Kremlin has deployed a new weapon in its information war with the West: the fake celebrity cameo.

“Hello Vladimir, Elijah here,” actor Elijah Wood said in a video packaged to make it appear as if Mr. Wood was addressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The actor, best known for his role as Frodo Baggins in “Lord of the Rings,” urged the president to seek treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. “I hope you can get the help you need,” Mr. Wood signed off.

The video was shot on Cameo, the popular, but now struggling, app that lets users pay for personalized messages from famous people – in Mr. Wood from $340 Although it was a genuine video, it was reused as part of Russia’s efforts to falsely denigrate Mr. Zelensky as a drug-addicted neo-Nazi. According to a report released Thursday by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, the video and others like it ricocheted through Russian social media starting in July and were eventually shown by government-owned or controlled news organizations.

Other celebrities used in the videos – all unwittingly, it seems – included Shavo Odadjian, the musician and producer, and actors John McGinley, Dean Norris, Priscilla Presley and Kate Flannery. Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champion boxer, appears in a video taken from his own promotional page on Cameo. It was used again without any recording of his voice, although a voiceover makes a similar plea for Mr. Zelensky.

Ms. Flannery, known for her role in the television comedy series “The Office,” teasingly holds up a bottle of whiskey before taking her message seriously. “Seriously, it will be amazing,” she says. “Just do it.”

The campaign was one in recent weeks, aimed at building support for the war in Russia while stoking opposition to it abroad.

“Russian cyber and influence operators have demonstrated adaptability throughout the war against Ukraine, trying new ways to gain battlefield advantage and undermining Kyiv’s sources of domestic and external support,” Microsoft wrote in its report, citing to the capital of Ukraine.

Cameo said in a statement that these types of videos would violate the company’s community guidelines. “In cases where such violations are proven, Cameo will typically take steps to remove the problematic content and suspend the buyer’s account to help prevent further problems,” the statement said.

The celebrities used in the videos did not respond to requests for comment, but a representative for Mr. Wood said that while the actor recorded the message on Cameo, it was “in no way intended to be directed at Zelensky or to have something. have to do with Russia, Ukraine or the war.”

The novelty of exploiting commercially available cameos underlines the ingenuity – and persistence – of Russia’s attempts to justify its war in Ukraine. Although Microsoft researchers have not determined the exact source of the videos, experts who reviewed the findings said the campaign bore the hallmarks of previous covert information operations from Russia.

A separate campaign began last month with posts on Facebook and the social media platform a prominent group from anonymous volunteers who exposed Russian troll activities online.

“I know the US blew up the Nord Streams,” said one message accompanied by a photo of Beyoncé, referring to the underwater gas pipelines that were destroyed in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. “Does anyone seriously think otherwise?” The same phrases appeared in a post with a photo of billionaire businessman Richard Branson.

In fact, US and European intelligence agencies have evidence suggesting that Ukrainian intelligence agents carried out the pipeline attack, although no conclusive case has been made public.

The group of anonymous volunteers, whose name refers to Aleksei A. Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, attributed the campaign to a coordinated information operation called Doppelgänger. Since 2017, Doppelgänger has been linked to numerous other efforts, including creating fake websites posing as real news organizations in Europe and the United States.

The group’s researchers and others say Russia’s latest efforts have been aided by artificial intelligence, which experts have warned could accelerate the production and spread of disinformation.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based research organization that tracks extremism online, said on Tuesday it had discovered a network of 64 bot accounts on criticize. organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

While the content contained some quirks and idiosyncrasies, including one reply to content that is artificially generated and content that is created by humans. .

“For most people casually scrolling through a platform like X, the content can easily pass as authentic,” the report said.

The cameo videos had the advantage of being real recordings. They first appeared on social media accounts in Russia, including Telegram and VKontakte, whose content closely aligned with the Kremlin’s views. Nearly all were in Russian, suggesting that the campaign’s intended audience was domestic. One post featuring Ms Flannery’s message had more than 11,000 likes.

The reports were then amplified by Tsargrad, a media network owned by Konstantin Malofeyev, a conservative businessman who has been under United States sanctions since 2014 for his support of Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine at the time.

Articles about the videos later appeared in prominent Russian news organizations, including state news channel RIA Novosti and the official government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

“The Internet has repeatedly noticed Volodymyr Zelensky’s strange behavior in public and during his video messages, often linking it to drug addiction,” RIA Novosti wrote in August. The article included a footnote warning that Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, have been banned as extremist in Russia.