ICIJ Finds Another Link in Kremlin Disinformation

The consortium of investigative journalists, ICIJ, has uncovered a disinformation ring run by Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration. Its internal name is “Team I”. The documents were leaked from the sanctioned “Agency for Social Projects”. The documents were seen by Süddeutsche Zeitung and Delfi Estonia, Radio Liberty reports.

The Dossier Center writes that high-ranking representatives of the presidential administration hold weekly briefings with the “Team” employees. Investigators claim that the project is supervised by Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko. The head of the Internal Policy Department (IPD) Alexander Kharichev actively participates in the meetings. The person responsible for the team's product is Sofia Zakharova, a referent of the Department for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications Infrastructure.

The “Team” is almost no different from other “troll factories”: they draw memes and caricatures, edit videos, and own a network of bots that write comments and distribute these materials. But the structure is also involved in forging websites of well-known Western media outlets where disinformation articles are published, and hires people to draw graffiti.

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At least two achievements of the “Team” are known. In the fall of 2023, their meme with Zelensky was posted by Elon Musk, and a member of the US House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene, publicly announced that Ukraine is trading in children's organs.

The creation of fake media sites was known before – Western journalists gave them the name Doppelganger, or “Double”. They were created by political strategist Ilya Gambashidze and his “Agency for Social Projects”. In March 2024, they fell under US sanctions. The TV channel “Current Time” draws attention to this.

Disinformation work is also aimed at emigrants from Russia. For example, this involves increasing distrust of the “main figures of emigration – Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov, Leonid Volkov, Ilya Ponomarev and Maria Pevchikh.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is an independent association of journalists with its main office in Washington. As of 2021, the association included more than 280 investigative journalists and about 100 media outlets from more than 100 countries.

ICIJ's largest projects were the publication of documents on corruption and tax evasion by world leaders – the Panama Papers (2016), the Paradise Papers (2017) and the Pandora Archive (2021).

Prepared by: Sergey Daga