For the second time in a year, France officially condemns a Russian influence campaign targeting the national territory. On Thursday, November 9, the Quai d’Orsay publicly condemned the involvement of the disinformation network Doppelganger, or Recent Reliable News, in the amplification and dissemination of photos of blue Stars of David tagged on walls in Paris and its near suburb.
In its press release, French diplomacy explains that numerous accounts on social networks attributed “with a high degree of confidence” to the Doppelganger network have amplified the photos of these tags, but above all that they were the first to propagate them online . The investigation was carried out by Viginum, the French organization fighting influence operations.
As Le Monde noted, at least two photos of the tags taken at night on Rue de Rocroy (10th arrondissement) had been massively distributed on Facebook and Twitter by Doppelganger accounts. If these automated accounts are crude, the photos distributed could not be found anywhere else, suggesting that they had been taken or received by a person linked to the disinformation network.
An ongoing investigation
The Quai d’Orsay specifies that its conviction relates specifically to the dissemination and amplification of these tags, while the very origin of the 250 Star of David stencils found in the Paris suburbs over the last ten days must be determined by a judicial investigation. Four people of Moldovan nationality (including a couple who were arrested) are suspected of being behind some of them.
The alleged sponsor of the operation, pro-Russian Moldovan businessman Anatolii Prizenko, confirmed to Libération that he had paid people to paint Stars of David on Parisian walls and assured that his aim was to “support” French Jews – a dubious claim, as Mr. Prizenko has posted several anti-Semitic messages on social media. Contacted by Le Monde, he did not answer questions about his possible links with intelligence services.
In Moscow, Russian diplomacy, for its part, refuted any link with these operations. “No, there was no external influence, it is not a diversion or a provocation,” said Russian diplomatic spokesperson Maria Zakharova at a press conference on Thursday.
This is the second official condemnation from the Quai d’Orsay targeting Doppelganger, a long and vast online Russian influence operation which relies as much on fake news sites as on copies of French, German or even Ukrainians. This network distributes its content in particular using a network of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts, generally of very poor quality and with limited reach, but also by purchasing advertisements on Meta’s social network using fake pages.
