The research for this study was supported by The B.L. Manger Foundation, Inc.

Executive Summary

In Russia’s view, supporters of the Israeli right-wing camp are more amenable to absorbing Moscow’s manipulative messages to promote a change in the policy of the Israeli government. The Russians, however, have also criticized the right wing when this has suited their purpose and even planned a messaging campaign targeting Israeli Arabs that was aimed at stirring violence against Jews. Doppelganger’s global campaign contributes to fanning antisemitism and negating the historical uniqueness of the Holocaust.

A senior Kremlin official is steering interference in Israel’s internal affairs. President Vladimir Putin is probably at least vaguely aware of it. The establishment of an interference campaign in Israel illustrates the deterioration in relations between Moscow and Jerusalem. Russia increasingly sides with Israel’s enemies (although it seeks to avoid a complete split with Jerusalem) and aspires to limit Israel’s military freedom of action. Russia seems to believe that Israel is distancing itself and that intervening in its affairs will give Moscow greater leverage. 

Doppelganger’s campaign in Israel likely aims both to signal to Jerusalem that Moscow can harm it and to strengthen Russia’s image of power in the world. Doppelganger reflects Moscow’s cynical willingness to exploit divisions within Israel’s domestic arena, undermine the foundations of Israel’s political system and alliance with the U.S., and to promote Russian interests.

In July 2023, Israel demanded that Russia suspend its interference campaign but failed to change Moscow’s calculus. During the 2024 elections campaign, the U.S. government and its allies, technological companies and civil society organizations took unprecedented steps to disrupt the Doppelganger IT infrastructure (including the segments allowing operations in Israel), disclosing its modus operandi and sanctioning its officials. Yet, the Doppelganger campaign persisted. Moscow invests a lot of money and effort in interference operations, both in Doppelganger and other networks with global reach, which have proven highly adaptable to countermeasures and technological changes over the years. 

While Doppelganger’s campaign has received considerable public attention in the West and Israel, its ability to shape political processes is questionable. Nevertheless, the Russian companies running the Doppelganger campaign portray Western legal actions (including those by the Israeli Security Agency, Shin Bet) and negative publications, as an acknowledgment of the effectiveness of the interference campaign and a reason for the Kremlin to invest further into its operations. 

The Russian campaign in Israel is currently run on a low-intensity scale. Still, Russia can rapidly step up its malign activity (by Doppelganger or other information warfare networks) and augment it with additional influence tools (including those outside the digital domain). Western experience shows that, in the long run, such interference undermines social cohesion and public trust in state institutions.

The severity of the threat posed by Russia’s meddling inside Israel is expected to increase due to the continued political tension in Israel and the possibility that Moscow could abuse a future Israeli election process. The threat of foreign interference (not only from Russia) has not been given sufficient attention in Israel’s re-examination of its national priorities in the wake of the “Swords of Iron” war. Israel differs in this respect from Western countries, which view the threat of disinformation and subversion with extreme severity. Israel lacks a national strategy for dealing with such foreign interventions: the Israeli Security Agency has insufficient legal powers to act, and the government’s cooperation with civil society bodies on this issue is in its infancy. 

Israel should take the following steps:

• Israel must establish a special national body to coordinate interagency efforts in countering foreign interference, promote necessary legislation and enforcement powers, strengthen mechanisms for working with civil society and technology companies, and promote programs for educating the public.
  
  
• It is imperative that the Israeli government gain clarity regarding Russia’s negative role and be ready to counter its operations.
  
  
• Israel must engage in closer coordination with Western partners to counter Russian interference campaigns, especially in actions against the technological infrastructure of campaign operators. 
  
  
• Israel must have at its disposal tools to exact costs from Moscow for its intervention (Israel remains one of the few Western countries that gives official Russian representatives almost boundless freedom of action).
  
  
• Formulate a strategy for communications with the Russians when it comes to interference. Issuing warnings without imposing costs may be perceived in Moscow as positive feedback that the cognitive campaign is “painful” and might portray Israel as weak.

Introduction

Over the past year, several journalistic investigations[1] have been conducted into an interference campaign on behalf of the Russian government that has been ongoing in Israel since April 2023. It is aimed at influencing public opinion in Israel on foreign and domestic issues – and, through this, to influence decision-makers in Jerusalem. The campaign in Israel has been identified as a component of the global Russian interference campaign that has been given the moniker Doppelganger. This study examines the goals of the Russian operatives running the campaign against Israel, as well as its timing, characteristics, and management. Finally, the study assesses the threat posed to Israel by Russian interference.

The often-used term “foreign influence” is inaccurate. A more appropriate concept is – “foreign interference,” which is defined as “when the deployment of different sources of national power (diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, religious, etc.) by one international actor to influence another is perceived by the latter as in contradiction with his values, norms, or laws.”[2] The Russian campaign fits this definition and constitutes an escalation of Russian interference in Israel’s internal affairs. It has the potential to weaken the State of Israel in several dimensions at a particularly sensitive time when the country is suffering from domestic turmoil and is engaged in war.

Due to the effort by Doppelganger’s operators to disguise their activities, and the removal of content from the Doppelganger campaign by Internet domain hosts and social network administrators, it is difficult to locate all the disinformation messages and articles targeting Israelis published by Doppelganger in the recent past. This study is nevertheless based on a large sample of messages published in Hebrew and English, including a database of hundreds of sponsored-ad posts published on Facebook between May 2023 and October 2024 (most of which are no longer available online), targeted texts published on sites posing as news sites in Israel, and monitoring of the activity of the Russian campaign on Twitter/X.[3]

Internal Doppelganger documents describe the thinking underlying its planning and the execution of interference campaigns in Israel and elsewhere. The credibility of these leaked documents could not be fully verified when the Hebrew version of this report was published in June 2024. In September 2024, an FBI press release fully corroborated the authenticity of the leaked papers and published further internal documents.[4]

The study also relies on secondary sources, including journalistic investigations and research reports prepared by Western governments, media, academics, technology companies, and civil society outfits on Doppelganger’s activities in Israel and other countries.[5]

Throughout this study, we will refer to Doppelganger’s activity as a whole, both in terms of content and technology, as a global campaign. Its activity in a specific country or language will be described as an “interference campaign,” while an effort confined to a limited period of time, or a specific subject/message will be described as an “interference operation.” The author translated the Russian texts.

My thanks to Prof. Efraim Inbar for editing the article and for his intellectually challenging comments that helped me refine the findings of this study. Special thanks to Georgy Poroskoun, to N.C., to the anonymous operator(s) of the Twitter/X channel “bot blocker” (dedicated to monitoring Doppelganger’s activities on that social network), and Ari Ben-Am, for their assistance in locating messages in Hebrew and materials in Russian, and for their sound advice in analyzing Russian activities. These four, along with Dima Adamsky, Eran Lerman and Gabi Siboni provided many other helpful comments. My thanks also to Ilan Evyatar for making the English version of this study readable, and to Elad Lahmany for doing a great job with the graphics. This English version updated the June 2024 Hebrew text.

Information warfare as a part of the Russian toolbox

The Russian organizational ecosystem focusing on information warfare has grown larger during the Putin era. Putin’s administration and its proxies presented a series of technological and conceptual innovations in the field, such as the “troll farm” (The Internet Research Agency, IRA) owned by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, which conducted, among other things, a campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[8] The deterioration in Russia’s relations with the West has made information warfare one of Moscow’s preferred fields of action, exploiting freedom of expression in the West to influence the agenda and political processes in rival countries.

Information warfare is a major battleground of the war in Ukraine, which is considered by the Putin regime as an existential issue for Russia. Putin sees the war as crucial to his legacy. Moscow perceives itself on the defensive in the information war waged by the West, under the leadership of the United States. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moscow’s information warfare has become even more aggressive.[9] The Russian government created economic opportunities for non-defense-related entities to participate in this activity,[10] especially when the security apparatuses were required to focus their efforts on military operations in Ukraine.

In recent years, Russia’s information warfare has not spared Israel. The Russian toolbox in the information battlefield in Israel includes, inter alia, political-diplomatic-military ties, coercive economic tools, the transmission of messages through state media, and a global informal propaganda apparatus. Within Israel, Moscow used the Russian Embassy, the Russian Cultural Center, organizations of Russian immigrants, pro-Russian network influencers, representatives of the Orthodox Church, and the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society.[11] A persistent Russian digital interference campaign dedicated to Israel was not created until 2023.

The mysterious double

The operators of the Doppelganger campaign in Europe try to convince European citizens that Ukraine is a corrupt and artificial country, ruled by an exploitive Nazi regime that seeks to bankrupt Europe through a constant demand for huge budgets. They present dire forecasts of the decline and disintegration of the European Union and its democratic regimes, play up European concerns about a broad military escalation between Russia and NATO, and predict that the United States would abandon its allies.

The information campaign took advantage of domestic political and social public debates, linking them to the war in Ukraine and the

treatment of Russia in a way that intensified internal tensions in European countries. In the summer of 2024, the Russian network made a strong effort to support right-wing candidates in the European Parliament elections and general elections in France[15] and undermine the Paris Olympic Games.[16] During 2024, shifting the result of the U.S. Presidential elections became a primary goal of the Russian campaign, with its internal documents stating the target “to secure a victory of the Republican candidate.”[17]

Two features of the Doppelganger network stood out: The first was the construction of fake websites masquerading as those of leading Western media outlets (for example, the Washington Post, Fox News, Der Spiegel, Die-Welt, Le Monde, and Le Parisien) to attract readers and give them a false sense of credibility. Doppelganger also established a series of disinformation dissemination websites that were pretending to be independent journalistic projects. In practice, the content of these sites consists mainly of texts written for the campaign, which promote Russia’s goals and messages against Ukraine and Western countries. The second feature is the distribution of this content by social network bots.

Doppelganger’s messages target Western audiences at the left and right fringes of the political map),[18] preferring those with conservative views, whom the network sees as more susceptible to its messages. Doppelganger tries to amplify the spread of messages favorable to Russia by local influencers whose voices are helpful for Russian aims. Doppelganger operators had a list of some 2,800 such influencers (in 81 countries).[19]

In line with the logic of Russian information warfare, Doppelganger does not seek to persuade its audience with a particular narrative but rather to undermine the credibility of Russia’s adversaries and their messages over time and obfuscate the truth. In the long run, it seeks to undermine democratic institutions and weaken the ability of targeted societies to resist Moscow’s wishes.

Who are the operators behind Doppelganger?

In September 2022, a report by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, pointed to two private Russian companies operating the Doppelganger network: the Social Design Agency (SDA) and a technology company called Structura National Technologies.[20] In July 2023, the EU identified an additional entity participating in the campaign – Russian Presidential Administration-affiliated NGO, ANO-Dialog, headed by Vladimir Tabak. ANO-Dialog disinformation websites helped to broaden the dissemination of messages generated by the Doppelganger campaign.[21] The September 2024 publication by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) draws a clear picture of all three entities directed by the Russian Presidential Administration (PA).[22]

The SDA is a mid-sized political consulting and public relations firm specializing in federal parliamentary election campaigns, local and municipal elections, internal politics, and working with Russian government bodies.[23] SDA’s website lists different government agencies as its clients, but the PA, the company’s main benefactor, is not mentioned. [24] The SDA is headed by Ilya Gambashidze, a strategic political consultant known in Russian as a “political technologist” (polittekhnolog). Gambashidze appears to be Doppelganger’s “chief of operations” and executes the directives from the PA. Gambashidze appeared in a self-glorifying internal SDA video clip. He was presented as the head of a special unit of fictitious “Russian Ideology Troops.” The hashtag #FactoryOfFakes was pictured throughout the video.[25]

Nikolai Tupikin owns Structura (though the DOJ claims that Gambashidze is also an owner) and oversees the interference campaign’s technical facets. There has also been a claim that the company belongs to ROSTEC, a Russian state defense giant.[26] ANO-Dialog was established supposedly to promote interaction between the regional administrations and the civilian population through digital channels. Still, it became a vehicle for information campaigning aimed at the Russian population. ANO-Dialog supported President Putin’s political initiatives, such as amending the constitution and going to war in Ukraine.[27]

The PA is the bureaucratic apparatus designed to assist the President of the Russian Federation in exercising his duties. Formally, this institution lacks independent authority. Still, in practice, due to the hyper-centralization of the Russian state system, especially during Vladimir Putin’s reign, it is one of the most powerful bodies in the country.

In 2022, the First Deputy Head of the PA, Sergei Kiriyenko, instructed the SDA to establish the Doppelganger network to strengthen Russia’s arsenal of tools to influence Western governments through public opinion to complement Russia’s military activity in Ukraine. Kiriyenko determines the directions of the Doppelganger network’s activities and receives regular reports on its “achievements.” [28]

Kiriyenko[29] (he adopted his mother’s surname over his father’s Jewish name, Izraitel) is one of the most powerful officials in Russia and is responsible for the departments of the PA dealing with domestic politics (internal order, mechanisms of control, ensuring the loyalty of the population and the elite, and political discipline of the bureaucracy and party system), government administration, and regime structure. He is known for his fondness for promoting scientific management methods based on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to improve the functional capacity of the Russian public administration. Throughout the war in Ukraine, he has led the assimilation projects of the annexed regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson).

Kiriyenko is not responsible for generating ideological thinking in Russia but runs the mechanism that formulates the political and social ideas Putin might adopt. He also leads programs to re-educate Russian society according to the values promoted by the Kremlin.[30] These values are Russia’s unique role as a state-civilization, patriotism, conservative family values, and the rejection of Western liberalism. Kiriyenko’s projects are characterized by a manipulative interpretation of history (which seeks to eliminate dark chapters in Russian/Soviet history and undermine the legitimacy and sovereignty of Eastern European countries).[31]

Kiriyenko’s subordinates in the PA are Tatyana Matveyeva, head of the Information Technologies Directorate, and Alexander Kharichev, head of the Regional Politics Directorate, who carry out daily coordination and guidance with SDA. The PA officials knew Gambashidze, who helped them in Russian politics, and sought his expertise when they needed to influence public opinion outside Russia in 2022.

Early on during the Doppelganger operation, Kiriyenko decided (in July 2022) that the Russian interference effort in Europe would focus on Germany to weaken its public’s support for the EU, NATO, the U.S. and the UK, and bolster the views of German politicians who believe the war in Ukraine is too costly. The Doppelganger campaign in Germany sought to strengthen the far-right AfD party and a radical-left BSW, both sympathetic to Russia, and to weaken the centrist parties (SPD and CDU/CSU), which favor aid to Ukraine and strengthen Germany’s commitment to NATO.[32]

Kiriyenko set a KPI for the success of the influence campaign in Germany—a 10 percent increase in support for Russia among Germans within 3 months. In early 2023, Kiriyenko instructed SDA/Structura to sow division in French society and weaken support for Ukraine and NATO. In France and Germany, Doppelganger operators tried to escalate protests that had developed in each country as a result of internal tensions.[33]

In January 2023, a Doppelganger interference campaign was launched in Ukraine. Kiriyenko approved the four main goals of the campaign; these became the main axes around which the campaign was carried out and according to which its results were measured. These goals included undermining and weakening Ukraine’s political and military leadership, deepening rifts in the elite, demoralizing the Ukrainian army, and undermining public order in the civilian sector. The KPIs were a decline in public support (and an increase in the rate of revulsion, “anti-ratings”) of key figures in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, the government, and the military; generation of high-profile conflicts and an increase in dismissals of public servants; increasing public perception that the political leadership cares only about itself and not the country; and creating a perception that Poland is Ukraine’s enemy and aspires to take over Ukrainian territories that once belonged to Poland.[34]

“Normal Israel”

In April 2023,[35] Doppelganger launched operations in Israel, creating Hebrew and English content (adapted to Israeli context). SDA constructed several websites that published articles pretending to be written by Israelis or American Jews. Central to the campaign were websites masquerading as leading Israeli news sites (such as Walla, N12, and Liberal) and U.S Jewish websites (The Forward and HaModia). These sites hosted articles discussing news from the Israeli political context but articulating narratives beneficial to Russia. The articles appeared to have been authored by journalists and contributors who were writing for real sites (and naturally didn’t write fake articles). Additionally, Doppelganger had “original” fake-news sites, Omnam (in Hebrew) and the Holyland Herald (in English).

Doppelganger’s network of bots, mainly on Facebook and X/Twitter, published posts with Russian narratives pretending to be written by Israelis or English-speaking Jews. Some posts were Doppelganger’s final product, including a short message and a vivid graphic image. Others also had a link attached, intended to lure social network users into seeing the “longreads” hosted on fake news sites. The narratives tried to fuse Russian interests surrounding the war in Ukraine with Israel’s burning problems.[36]

Fake articles written in Hebrew during the first months of the campaign in Israel claimed that the U.S. Democratic Party was organizing left-wing demonstrations in Israel against the government’s judicial reform program due to the Biden administration’s desire to overthrow the Netanyahu government. Doppelganger posted claims about the Zelensky administration’s “Nazism” [Figure 2]. Cartoons and messages were circulated on social networks stating or implying that the United States was working to corrupt Israeli society and distance it from Judaism (timed around the gay pride parades in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem [Figure 3]). A frequent message was that Israel should mind its own affairs and not donate money to Ukraine [Figure 4].

The Doppelganger interference campaign in Israel was born in February-March 2023 against the backdrop of public controversy and demonstrations in the country over the judicial reform. The idea behind it is elaborated in an SDA internal document in Russian titled “Normal Israel – A Proposal for a Project.”[37] The document, probably written for Kiriyenko, proposed turning Israel into a new arena for Doppelganger’s campaign and explained its logic, goals, and format.

The document stated that the profound political rift in Israeli society in early 2023 is a fertile ground for influencing public opinion, with the aim of leading Israel to adopt favorable positions for Russia regarding the war in Ukraine. It also aimed to affect the opinion of the world Jewry, especially the American Jewish community, to influence the November 2024 U.S. elections. A goal of secondary importance was to provide favorable coverage and create legitimacy in the eyes of the Israelis for the Russian Presidential elections (March 2024).

This document, which does not separate between the Israeli public and the American Jewish community, paints a grim reality in Israel. According to the report, the political tensions in Israel stem from the activities of the Israeli left, which the report claims is dominated by the U.S. Democratic Party. The Democrats are accused of seeking to topple an elected right-wing government in Israel, like their overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine by demonstrators in 2014. The document stressed that in early 2023, Israel was on the verge of civil war, with left-wing spokesmen promising to settle scores with supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and threatening to murder them.

The SDA document claims that one of the most important goals for the Israeli left was to approve the provision of Israeli military aid to Ukraine, to expand the absorption of Ukrainian refugees, and to encourage mass immigration (Aliyah) of Russian Jews to Israel, including support for the immigration of liberal opposition figures in Russia. On the other hand, from SDA’s perspective, the Israeli right aspires to warm ties with Russia, limit aid to Ukraine, annul the Grandchild Clause of the Law of Return and preclude the possibility of Russian “liberal fugitives” immigrating to Israel.

According to SDA, “It is clear to all that support should be lent to a legitimate right-wing Israeli government against the leftists, which the Democratic Party supports.” In their view, the “Normal Israel” project should be based on the political positions of the Likud and Religious Zionism parties.

The SDA document proposes defining the purpose of the interference campaign in Israel as building “stable public opinion that will not accept neo-Nazism and dictatorship in Ukraine or the provision of aid to neo-Nazis.” As far as the SDA is concerned, the project will be considered successful “if the number of Israelis who support Russia in its fight against Nazism increases.” SDA recommended sending messages to the Israeli public on four main topics:

• Nazism in Ukraine today – emphasizing the need to “sow fear” among Israelis about the possibility of Nazism spreading throughout the world.
  
  
• Parallels between Russia and Israel on security threats and territorial integrity.
  
  
• “Heating up” public interest in the U.S. presidential election while flooding public discourse with “speculation and rumors.”
  
  
• Publication of articles exposing “anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish positions in the anti-Putin opposition” in Russia.

SDA’s analysis of Israeli society in the “Normal Israel” project proposal framework is simplistic, examining the country’s internal situation through a narrow lens of issues that interest the Russian leadership. The parallel between the situation in Israel and Ukraine in 2014 ignores the unique context of the political dispute in Israel, which mainly concerns domestic affairs. It frames Israel as an arena in a global conflict between Russia and the United States. Such a depiction of Israel probably helped persuade Kremlin officials to approve and fund an interference campaign in the country.

It is evident that the document was written without a deep understanding of Israeli society[38]. It accentuated the importance of the Russia-Ukraine war on the Israeli agenda by presenting this issue as one of the most prominent political bones of contention in Israel. In practice, the political debate in Israel revolves around neutrality (a position held by both the Bennett-Lapid and Netanyahu governments) and limited, non-lethal security aid to Ukraine. Opinion polls from 2022 and 2023 show a higher support rate for Ukraine among center-left voters than on the right. However, support for Russia was close to zero in both camps.[39]

The immigration to Israel of prominent Russian opposition figures is not something the Israeli public is aware of (contrary to claims presented in the document). The SDA’s assumptions that polarization in political positions in Israel is similar in characteristics to the rift in the American Jewish community and that Israelis have a formative influence on the voting pattern of American Jewry reflect ignorance on the part of the authors of the document.[40]

Defining the purpose of the interference campaign in Israel as “non-acceptance of the dictatorship and neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” a phrase jarring to Israeli ears, corresponds with the prevailing discourse in Moscow amid the war in Ukraine. As part of its manipulation of historical narratives, Moscow promotes the false claim that the current Ukrainian administration (many of its officials are of Jewish origin) derives its ideological foundations from Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi Germany.[41] The position that Ukraine and its government are a “Nazi regime” is unacceptable to the entire political spectrum in Israel and most Israeli historians. Furthermore, this narrative

contradicts Israel’s official position and has led to a slowdown in longstanding cooperation between Israel and Russia concerning Holocaust remembrance.[42]

There has been a growing understanding in Israel in recent years that Russian positions denigrate the Holocaust and constitute an attempt to distort its meaning (such attempts have only increased over the years of the war in Ukraine). Official Russian messaging today states that the term “Holocaust” describes the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany on the “Soviet People,” in general, and is not unique to the systematic extermination of Jews.[43]

This is a change to Russia’s policy, which, before the war in Ukraine, used Israel and Jewish organizations around the world to “endorse” the Red Army’s role in liberating the death camps, and to grant international legitimacy to its narrative of World War II. The war in Ukraine has put at odds Russia’s official historical view of the Holocaust period, which emphasizes Soviet heroism in defeating Nazism, with Israel’s highlighting the uniqueness of the systematic murder of Jews in world history. Russia, which gave up its ties with the West following its invasion of Ukraine, needs less external (Israeli) endorsement.

Doppelganger’s first steps in Israel (Spring-Autumn 2023)

From the spring of 2023 up until the October 7 attacks, SDA operations in Israel followed the “Normal Israel” plan. Doppelganger repeatedly circulated content portraying Ukraine as a threat to Israel, claiming that aid to Ukraine harms the Israeli economy, and that if the Israeli government were to cave in to Western pressure to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons this would undermine its sovereignty [Figure 6]). The campaign regurgitated the claim (without presenting evidence) that weapons arriving in Ukraine could spill over to the black market and be directed against Israel [Figure 7]. It also produced content linking Ukraine to Nazism, undermining President Zelensky’s image by disseminating the message that despite his Jewish origins, he is a neo-Nazi [Figure 8]. False

information, according to which Ukraine was providing military training to Hamas operatives, was also sent out.

Doppelganger portrays the United States, the Biden administration, and the Democratic Party as enemies of Israel who get involved in its internal affairs, trying to topple the Netanyahu government, and striving to trample on Israel’s Jewish identity. Doppelganger has disseminated claims that protests in Israel against the judicial reform were financed with money that came from White House sources [Figure 9] and that the United States allegedly worked to arm Hamas against Israel [Figure 10].

SDA propagandists linked most of their publications (aimed at influencing Israel’s foreign policy) to current news about the disputes over the judicial reform. Their messages attempted to deepen societal divisions: between left and right, between religious and secular Israelis, and between Jews and Arabs.

They also sought to exacerbate Israelis’ fears about foreign workers. Major clashes between groups of Eritrean foreign workers in Tel Aviv in September 2023[44] provided SDA an opportunity to encourage xenophobia. This issue was connected to other messaging employed by the Russian interference campaign, such as calls to restrict the entry into Israel of Ukrainian refugees and Russian opposition figures. All Russian global interference campaigns attempt to leverage xenophobia, connecting its local context to messages that are consistent with Russian interests.

Notably, Doppelganger’s messages in Hebrew often corresponded to authentic positions expressed by opponents of judicial reform and critics of the Biden administration in Israel. The distribution of these messages by SDA was instrumental in sowing discord and deepening division in Israeli society and did not stem from agreement with the positions of Israeli conservatives. As will be shown below, the Russian campaign also attacks right-wing figures when this suits Russian interests.

Doppelganger’s messaging in Israel and globally following the 7.10 assault

Russia’s  disinformation campaign main messages were: Israel is weak, abandoned by its unreliable American partners, Russia has the ability to do harm, and, at the same time, positive relations with Moscow have benefits. The reason for this surge in Facebook activity may have been Russia’s desire to respond to the positive coverage of President Biden’s May 31 statement on a plan to end the Gaza war and statements from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office acknowledging that the plan was coordinated with Israel.

Coping with Western countermeasures in July-September 2024

As noted, in July 2024, several reports exposed the architecture of Doppelganger’s Internet domain infrastructure. Subsequently, a significant part of the operation was shut down, including fake clones of Israeli media outlets, Walla! and Liberal.[60] In September 2024, the U.S. seized additional Doppelganger domains, including Holyland Herald, an outlet pretending to be an English-speaking Israeli website. Hebrew-language Omnam and English-language, The Forward and HaModia clones continued operating, but were shut down by the end of October 2024.

Since July 2024, Doppelganger’s Facebook operation has dramatically diminished the number of Hebrew messages and has been conducted mainly in English. Previously, Hebrew posts were published almost daily. Text formats have also changed: instead of plain text, the SDA employed trickery to obstruct automatic pattern recognition by social network operatorstask with combatting clandestine political messaging on the platform [Figures 28 and 29]. This new format apparently leads to much less interaction with authentic users.

In October 2024, the campaign also started using Reddit, Pinterest and Instagram social networks for its messages, probably as an alternative to Fecebook’s harsher content supervision. This was executed clumsily, with messages in English (for the U.S. and the Israeli public), German, French and Polish being posted by the same bots side by side [Figure 24]. The new channels didn’t provide those messages more interaction with authentic users, and the Russian bot-users observed by the author were shut down there in a matter of days or hours.

Ahead of the Paris Olympic Games, Doppelganger staged a fake digital operation threatening athletes, including Israelis, supposedly on behalf of Muslim  radicals, with AI generated videos calling for “revenge.” This was as a part of a broad Russian campaign to disrupt the Olympics.[61]

During August 2024, the U.S. deployed a large military force in the Middle East to coerce Iran to refrain from reprisal for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, but Doppelganger continued to promote the narrative that Washington is betraying Israel.

In the run-up to November 2024, the presidential race became more central to Doppelganger’s targeting of Israeli and Jewish audiences. The campaign created a positive image of Donald Trump, while atacking the Democratic Party, Vice President Harris, and President Biden.

SDA attempts to break out from the digital domain

Leaked SDA documents attest that its staff thought that there are limits as to what can be achieved through social media digital campaigning without “boots on the ground,” and proposed “real-world” activities in Israel. In early 2023, it suggested establishing a political party in Israel based on Russian immigrants in the country, hoping that it could  win three to four seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament – potentially a powerful balancing faction in Israel’s deadlocked politics. It also considered establishing some kind of “Israeli office,” which would cost an estimated 1.2 million dollars. The campaign’s “creative” team proposed spraying  provocative graffiti in Arab neighborhoods in Israel, supposedly on behalf of Jewish right-wing extremists. SDA suggested distributing leaflets in synagogues and churches in Israel, as a part of a global campaign depicting Ukraine as an anti-Christian state.[62]

In October 2023,  Doppelganger circulated messages that graffiti of Stars of David were painted on an apartment building in Paris (French intelligence believes this was done by agents working on behalf of Russia), ostensibly in preparation for a pogrom against the Jews of Paris.[63] In May 2024, A Holocaust memorial in Paris was defaced with “blood-red hands” (this was interpreted as evoking the lynch of two IDF reservists in Ramallah in 2000). Once again, Russia was the prime suspect behind the provocation. Doppelganger circulated the footage extensively in France, accusing President Macron of inaction in the face of an antisemitic rampage at a sensitive time in the run-up to elections for the European Parliament [Figure 25].[64]

In November 2023, Doppelganger branches (in French, German, and English) distributed a video and photos attributed to a Turkish group, the Grey Wolves, hinting that it intened to kill athletes at the Paris Olympics. It used a grafitti referring to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Games in Munich.[65]

Why did Russia step up its information warfare campaign against Israel in 2023?

Prior to the war in Ukraine, it was evident that despite all the tools at Moscow’s disposal in Israel, the Russian influence campaign was conducted at a low intensity in comparison to Moscow’s campaigns in other Western countries. Russia did not establish any dedicated direct communication channels to transmit its messages in Hebrew to the Israeli public, although it operated many such channels in different languages in other countries. Before the war in Ukraine, Russian state media voiced almost no direct criticism of Israel and its leadership, and the Russian Foreign Ministry adopted a moderate approach to controversial Israeli policies, such as its response to the Iranian nuclear program, Israeli attacks in Syria, or the Palestinian issue.

This moderate attitude (before the invasion of Ukraine) stemmed from the Kremlin’s perception of Israel as a “friendly country.” President Vladimir Putin’s close relationship with Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett contributed to this Russian approach to Israel. Even when Russia adopted an aggressive information campaign against Israel, it was conducted for short periods, such as during the crisis that followed the downing of the Russian plane in Syria (2018)[67] or the Naama Issachar affair (2019).[68] In these cases, Putin and Netanyahu were able to reach understandings and calm tensions.

In the wake of the war in Ukraine, Jerusalem and Moscow grew apart,[69] and Russia feared a further deterioration in relations could endanger its interests vis-à-vis Israel. On the one hand, Israel refrained from imposing sanctions on Russia, canceling aviation links, and supplying weapons to Ukraine. On the other, Israel condemned the Russian invasion, voted against Russia at the UN General Assembly, and provided Ukraine with humanitarian assistance. Since 2022, Moscow has seen Israel as subject to Western pressure to transfer military equipment to Ukraine and downgrade its ties with Russia.

Moreover, the intimate political dialogue between President Putin and Israeli Prime Ministers Netanyahu and Bennett was interrupted in the summer of 2022 when Yair Lapid – who was perceived by Moscow as anti-Russian – became prime minister as part of a rotation with Bennett. Netanyahu returned to the prime minister’s office at the end of December 2022, but the dialogue was not renewed and there were no direct calls between the leaders of the two countries until October 16, 2023.[70] The dialogue resumed at the initiative of Russia in the wake of the October 7 attacks but has remained limited in scope and frequency.

The rapid rupture of Moscow’s ties with Western countries following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Russia to update the model of influence over them. Previously, the Russian security services played a central role in conducting information warfare. The Russian military’s poor performance in 2022 and reduced space for Russian spies in the West due to the mass expulsion of intelligence personnel under diplomatic cover created a void into which civilian and government-affiliated entities found their way. Influence campaign experts who dealt with the Russian domestic arena – SDA, Structura, Ano-Dialog and others – were eager to create new mechanisms for influence over Western publics and governments.

As Kiriyenko expanded his information warfare activities beyond the borders of Russia, and the SDA sought new arenas for its thriving new business, Israel, in early 2023, seemed an attractive arena for operations. Israel was considered an important country for Russia because of potential common interests with Moscow. Despite being a part of the American camp, it was seen as willing to confront Washington occasionally. The weakening of Moscow’s other levers of influence over Jerusalem against the background of the war in Ukraine created high demand for interference campaigning. Moreover, in the mindset of Putin’s Russia, circumstances of social polarization and the fierce struggle over Israel’s judicial reform seemed to Moscow to be a perfect parallel to the Ukraine of 2014 during the anti-Russian revolution. These circumstances made it easier to “market” to the Kremlin the need to launch an interference campaign in Israel.

Behind the scenes of a disinformation factory

In its early 2023 proposal for the “Normal Israel” project, SDA estimated that within six months, it would achieve a following of about half a million people in Israel and the United States. To this end, SDA proposed that all the content it created be posted in three languages (Hebrew, English, and Russian) and operate in six social media platforms parallel to clone and proprietary websites. The system, described as the “Comments Machine,” was supposed to imitate authentic user engagement to affect the social networks’ algorithms and produce viral dispersion. Political cartoons were presented as a force multiplier to encourage interest in SDA products. The proposed project’s cover story was that it was operated by “energetic activists” from Israel, some of whom preferred not to reveal their identities. The initial proposal suggested refraining from “augmented reality” (an SDA euphemism for forging fake narratives, documents and media) in the initial stage so as to earn credibility in the eyes of the Israeli public.[71] Yet later versions of the project did not hesitate to employ such “augmented reality.” [72]

The Doppelganger campaign in Israel does not in reality operate through all these channels, and it is doubtful whether it managed to reach half a million Israelis a month. At the same time, the campaign is active on Twitter and Facebook, conveying messages in Hebrew, English, and occasionally in Russian and Arabic. Political cartoons became a central component of the campaign in Israel until SDA reduced their use in Israel in May 2024.

The “Normal Israel” proposal elaborated that the project team is supposed to list ten different professional teams:

• Management
  
  
• Media monitoring
  
  
• Social media monitoring, to identify appropriate statements by influencers
  
  
• Research team, also in the field of public opinion
  
  
• Creative team, to define what content needs to be produced, promote “special tasks” and generate fakes
  
  
• Production team – texts, images, and videos (following the creative team’s guidelines)
  
  
• “Exclusive reporters in Israel”
  
  
• Translation bureau
  
  
• Distribution team to create text messages and comments on social networks
  
  
• Control and reporting team to gather statistics and prepare reports

Doppelganger’s persistent interference campaigns required SDA/”Structura” to organize a mass-production mechanism, having high occupational professionalization (as emphasized by the above list of teams employed)[73] and sophisticated technological infrastructure.[74] SDA internal documents claimed that in January-April 2024, it generated 34 million comments, 40,000 “content units” (i.e., posts, “longreads” or sponsored ads) on social media, and thousands of videos, memes, and graphics. [75]

The industrial-scale operation of the Doppelganger campaign is illustrated by an increase in the number of languages, the duplication of the content produced (graphics, texts, and video) from one campaign to another, a common technological infrastructure, and the ability to coordinate and synchronize the dissemination of messages at an intensive pace in a large number of dynamic arenas.

On Facebook, Hebrew and English posts are distributed as paid advertisements (main message, image/cartoon, and sometimes a link to websites impersonating major media outlets in Israel or videos). The messages on Twitter/X, Reddit, Pinterest and Instagram follow a similar pattern, and the Doppelganger-controlled network of bots redistributes and responds to messages to create a semblance of interest.

Reach can be controlled by increasing the number of users posting similar messages and investing more money in marketing. Recent research suggests that the volume of sponsored advertising in France and Germany increased ahead of their governments’ decisions on aid to Ukraine and shrank after these decisions had been made. The “Bot blocker” Twitter/X channel claimed that anti-Israeli Doppelganger posts on Twitter/X during the Paris Olympics got 10 million views in 24 hours.[84]

SDA and Structura’s profitability skyrocketed in 2022, when the two began operating interference campaigns in Europe. Structura’s revenues increased seven-fold compared to 2021 (to some 75 million rubles, about $800,000), and SDA’s revenues increased four-fold (to about 73 million rubles, just under $800,000) – these amounts do not necessarily reflect all the income/expenses of managing the interference campaigns. Data for 2023 show a drop in revenue for SDA (to some 3.5 million rubles, $38,000) and Structura (to 40 million rubles, some $430,000). This drop may indicate that after European sanctions were imposed on the two companies (and ahead of the possibility of U.S. sanctions, which were finally imposed in early 2024), financial activity was transferred to alternative economic entities, less exposed to sanctions.[85] SDA/Structura are just two of many players operating in Russia in the “foreign influence/interference industry,” demonstrating functional capability, adaptability to the U.S. and EU counter-efforts, and a sustainable economic model.

Doppelganger’s activity in Israel is less intensive than its European campaigns, but it is continuous and up-to-date, and it creates a learning experience for Russian campaign operators. The rough evaluation of the operational cost of the interference campaign in Israel might be up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, with several dozen people involved (most of them dealing in parallel with other countries).

It is evident that beyond the geopolitical considerations that feed the Russian campaign in Israel, there is also an economic-bureaucratic dynamic behind it: officials in the PA who seek to demonstrate to Putin just how active they are, and contractors (SDA/Structura/ANO-Dialog) seeking to “make a buck” without special concern for morality, the effectiveness of their operations and the consequences for socio-political stability in Israel.

If the Kremlin requires, the intensity of the Doppelganger campaign in Israel can quickly increase. For instance, a greater number of bots may be activated, payment for sponsored content may increase, or the Hebrew-language campaign may be moved to other social networks where Doppelganger is active. Moreover, the campaign can be launched in conjunction with other interference efforts, including outside the digital space or similar digital campaigns by other Russian actors.

Countering the Doppelganger campaign

In legitimate marketing campaigns, advertisers identify themselves by name and are wary of offering blatantly false information for fear of libel suits and reputational damage. In contrast, the organizers of a Doppelganger-style political interference campaign disguise their identity and see fake news as a central tool in undermining credibility and in promoting disorientation in society to weaken target countries.[86] Despite Facebook’s guidelines, the Doppelganger operators do not declare their content as having a political context.

Doppelganger encounters a variety of Western efforts to limit or stop the distribution of its messages. Governmental, corporate, and civil society research and investigative bodies expose Doppelganger’s activities and update the public and authorities of their findings. Government publications on the Doppelganger network employ “naming and shaming” tactics. The Biden Administration introduced an innovative domain seizure procedure as the U.S. presidential elections approached.[87] The European Union, the United States and other western-imposed sanctions on SDA, ANO-Dialog, Structura, and the owners of these entities in 2023 and 2024. Tech companies and intelligence agencies work to remove user networks and bots, shut down servers and employ various other means to create obstacles for the disinformation campaigners.

However, SDA employs increasingly sophisticated counter-efforts to conceal its operations and ensure their survivability. Facebook removes fictitious users (“bots”) operated by the network within hours. In response, SDA/Structura operate a “farm” that specializes in creating a constant output of fictitious users – if they manage to survive even a day, that justifies the expense for the operators.[88] Additionally, through its posts, SDA explores the fine line that Facebook draws between a non-political message and a political one that can be banned. The bot network on Twitter/X distributes unique disposable links to content produced for the campaign. Clicking on the link will take the unaware user through several servers to obscure the network’s tracks.[89] Bots are given random nicknames that make it more challenging for the social media platforms to identify them.

In July-September 2024 a series of exposures and legal actions hurt Doppelganger harshly. On July 11, 2024, the Swedish media foundation Qurium and the German investigative journalism organization CORRECTIV published a report that dissected Doppelganger’s web domains and bot user network. It outlined the interference campaign’s practices to conceal its IT infrastructure in the EU and Asia. Following the exposure, some domain hosters succumbed to public pressure and shut down a significant part of SDA/Structura domains, including fake clones of Israeli websites. The Russian operators rushed to reorganize their servers[92] in parallel to a continued large-scale interference campaign in the U.S. and the E.U..

On September 4, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) seized further Doppelganger domains, including the English-language Holyland Herald, pretending to be an Israeli news site. The seizure was accompanied by the publication of a 277-page affidavit by the FBI, which, based on intelligence collection, laid down a granular description of the Russian campaign’s goals and modus operandi. Most of the affidavit is dedicated to 12 internal SDA documents. The legal trigger for the domain’s seizure was Doppelganger’s infringement of trademarks of established media websites by producing fake clones of these sites (as well as election interference).[93]

In November 2024, CORRECTIV published a further analysis of Doppelganger’s distribution chain, and used it to pressure European companies involved in it to shut down the Russian campaign’s ability to redirect users from social networks to Doppelganger’s fake sites. CORRECTIV’s investigative journalists considered the report to have dealt a significant blow to Doppelganger’s operations. They further identified potentioal collaboration between SDA/Structura and the Russian Ministry of Defense.[94] Meanwhile, Operation Overload, also known as Operation Matryoshka, –  another Russian disinformation network –  rather than Doppelganger appeared to have played a primary role during the critical final days of the U.S. election campaign. This shift could indicate that Doppelganger suffered significant operational damage, Neverthless, SDA/Structura did not cease its activities and there is even a hypothesis that it may have hiden behind the Operation Overload/Matryoshka campaign. [95]

Political and technological countermeasures are indeed challenging the Russian campaign’s operators. However, the cybercrime international ecosystem allows the Russians to recover quickly. On September 10, less than a week after the DOJ seizure of the Doppelganger domains, its Twitter/X bots network worked hard to portray Trump as the winner of the TV debate with Harris.[96]

Additionally, “naming and shaming” tactics have limitations and might be counterproductive because negative publicity is considered an achievement for interference campaign operators. Russian entities have limited assets in the West and are not significantly exposed to the risk of sanctions. However, Russian citizens who are subjected to Western sanctions are honored and receive huge economic benefits in Putin’s Russia – a gesture of appreciation for the personal price they have paid in their operations “for the homeland.”[97]

Thousands of SDA documents reached the western media and researchers, but only a handful describe presentation of Doppelganger’s achievements to President Putin. It is unclear if it happened or whether SDA’s weekly activity reports prepared for Kiriyenko were indeed shown to Putin. It would be safe to assume that Putin is aware of Doppelganger’s activity but is not involved directly in management of the operation. On the other hand, the documents show that Kiriyenko’s aides, Kharichev and Zakharova, give elaborate creative suggestions to SDA and are probably very happy to see their ideas implemented and distributed globally.[98]

In July 2023, Israeli intelligence officials demanded that Russia cease its interference operations in Israel.[99] However, the campaign continues to operate to this day. A search of Facebook’s ads library (the primary distribution channel for disseminating the campaign’s messages in Israel) found that only a few of the approximately 400 messages on which this study is based are still available for search. As for the Facebook messages that the author was directly exposed to during the months of the study, most of them became unavailable within less than a day of their appearance. Facebook-Meta has removed them and may yet remove the items that are still available in the future. These items may have been removed at the request of Israeli security officials; Facebook-Meta has not removed thousands of similar Doppelganger messages in French or German that appeared months ago.[100]

The right-wing/conservative camp in Israel is receptive to cricism of the U.S. and faces  a persistent Russian effort to manipulate its perception of reality. The challenge faced by this group in Israel is similar to that of conservatives in the United States and Western countries.

Third, there has been a period of improvement in the campaign operators’ command of Hebrew. Initially, in Doppelganger’s posts in Hebrew, the language was inarticulate and often seemed to be a literal translation from Russian. In recent months, there have been almost no Facebook posts in Hebrew, and the Omnam site was obviously being updated through low-quality machine translation (until it was shut down in September or October 2024). SDA documents revealed that the organization had one Hebrew translator, who might have been living in Israel. This detail reveals attempts to enlist collaborators in Israel, and SDA’s lack of a deep cultural understanding of Israel.[103]

Fourth, change is observable in graphic messages. Initially, the SDA creative team used antisemitic motifs in their early posts: Jews/Israelis were portrayed as ultra-Orthodox figures, depicted in an unflattering manner, for example, against the background of gold coins (Figures 2, 4, and 21). There was an overuse of swastikas and Nazi symbols (Figures 1, 2, and 8) – which, for most Israelis, is blasphemous and off-putting and did not add credibility to the promoted content.

Has the Doppelganger campaign succeeded in influencing Israel?

The overall impression is that the direct impact of the Doppelganger campaign in Israel is quite limited, though it is difficult to reach a definitive conclusion. Meta determined in September 2023 that Doppelganger is the most extensive and most aggressive and persistent campaign it has encountered since 2017.[104] Summer 2024 reports about Doppelganger’s attempts to influence the EU Parliamentary elections of June 2024 and the campaign ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections indeed draw a picture of the high intensity and volume of the campaign. Nevertheless, they assess it as ineffective in shifting results.[105] This raises the question: should Doppelganger be treated as a significant threat, or is it merely generating inconsequential noise?

Prolonged disinformation campaigns undermine public confidence in the reliability of information, weaken trust in state institutions, and promote social polarization.[106] Moreover,
even communities accustomed to years of Russian disinformation streams sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between reliable and fake information, and vulnerability to fake information may vary between subgroups and different topics. For example, false claims presented as economic predictions (e.g., “the economic situation is bleak”) may appear more credible than other types of disinformation.[107]

The messages disseminated by the Russian interference campaigns is not intended to persuade or necessarily be consistent. The operators distribute a “menu” of narratives tailored to different target audiences, which are meant to influence diverse emotional mechanisms – provoking anger, identification, or even passivity and depression.[108] In the case of Doppelganger, the difference in narratives, from country to country, stems from an effort by the Russian campaign operators to create a variety of messages that reinforce conflicts to weaken the target countries from within or maintain a state of inability to make decisions that are not to Moscow’s liking. The purpose of the interference campaign is not to rally supporters around an idea but rather to make it difficult to implement measures to Russia’s detriment.

The recently leaked SDA documents reveal the   obsession of Doppelganger campaign managers – and likely their clients as well – with monitoring and measuring campaign impact. Measuring the success of interference campaigns is complex: What constitutes an appropriate metric for success? What should be measured and what can be measured? Collecting vast amounts of data is costly, and, at times, virtually impossible, when the audience is at a state scale.[109]

Doppelganger’s “control and reporting team” prepares periodic reports [Figure 34] to track performance, update superiors, and make any necessary adjustments. These reports resemble tools used to conduct online marketing campaigns, and from them, we can learn about Russia’s goals and how their effectiveness is reported to the “client” in the Kremlin. The reports present the main focuses of each campaign, which are broken down into narratives, distribution channels, and various means of conveying messaging.[110]

Figure 35: The percentage of fake articles produced by Doppelganger targeting various audiences by country. Israel -accounts for approximately 5.5% The data is for November 20, 2023, through May 1, 2024. It is based on the articles whose links were distributed on the Twitter/X network only. Courtesy of” bot blocker” X Channel.

SDA measures easy-to-collect parameters. It examines three primary parameters: the distribution data (views) of its posts, user interaction with the distributed content, and adversarial countermeasures. SDA’s Israeli campaign is limited (in comparison to activity in France or Germany) when it comes to the number of users/”bots” distributing messages and the financial investment in marketing content. The Twitter/X channel “bot blocker,” which focuses on monitoring Doppelganger activity, claims that activity directed at Israel amounted to 5.5–6 percent of the total messages of the entire network worldwide in November 2022 by May 2023[111] [Figure 35]. A German government report assessed in the summer of 2024 that less than 3 percent of Doppelganger’s content targets Israel.[112]

Technically, the Doppelganger campaign in Israel can reach hundreds of thousands of views per post/message. In March 2024, Twitter/X messages disseminated as part of Doppelganger’s Hebrew campaign, accusing the United States and Ukraine of responsibility for the attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow (which was carried out by the Islamic State), received nearly 400,000 views. This is out of 15 million views worldwide.[113] In May 2024, Doppelganger produced a global campaign with a viral video named “Bye Bye Biden” mocking the U.S. president. The video was made in Russia with considerable investment. During the campaign week, bots shared the Hebrew video nearly 200,000 times on Twitter/X.[114]

Nevertheless, the count stems from automatic bot amplification, which creates bias regarding the extent of the public’s real interest in the content distributed. For example, many of Doppelganger’s posts on Twitter/X show hundreds of reposts with a minuscule number of views. This combination implies artificial amplification without any broad interest from real people.[115]

In two years of activity in Israel, SDA didn’t succeed in producing any major newsworthy event. It proved a generic capability to deliver large-scale engagement with the Israeli public, but it cannot attest to an attitude change among the target audience.

SDA also monitors and reports sociological data on public opinion. While pretending to monitor a change in the general population, they practically base their observations on analyzing the response patterns of social network consumers to Doppelganger’s content. The description of the methodology leaves an impression that SDA produced a pseudo-scientific approach to reassure the PA client, Kiriyenko – known for his preoccupation with numbers and performance indicators (KPIs) – of the productivity of their work.[116]

Changes in public opinion can be due to reasons that are unrelated to interference campaigns. The campaign might be responsible for a tiny part (if any), but the campaign operator may take credit for the entirety of the change (especially if this pleases the “client”). SDA reported to the Kremlin that it succeeded in influencing the EU Parliamentary elections with a surge in the power of the right-wing representatives, though this was an anticipated trend that was in no way connected to Doppelganger’s campaigning.[117] The campaign might have had some impact but isolating it with the Doppelganger polling toolbox seems improbable. An alarming development is mentioned in an internal SDA document from June 2024 that alludes to a French polling firm being used without its knowledge to poll the public, as a sanity check for SDA.[118]

In addition, SDA monitors publications, technical reports, enforcement and push-back measures by Western government agencies surrounding its activity. It collects evidence from pressure events and technical countermeasures to prove the effectiveness of its work, which will be presented to the PA. The Israeli security agency (most likely Shin Bet) is mentioned in the list of government agencies resisting Doppelganger (“The “collective West” countries are seriously concerned by the effectiveness of the project… and have been involved in the effort of countering our narratives”). [119]

Only a tiny portion of the leaked SDA internal documents mention Israel. We don’t know if the Israeli segment of the Doppelganger campaign is considered a success in the eyes of the SDA or the Kremlin. It may be perceived as successful and effective in the view of those who commissioned the project, even if SDA deliberately runs it on a limited scale.

1. Use as an intimidation tool: Perhaps the Kremlin’s introduction of an interference campaign targeting Israel was intended merely to signal Moscow’s capacity for damage to Jerusalem and to gain operational experience in navigating the Israeli digital battlefield. This is similar to what Dima Adamsky describes as “informational deterrence.” It means issuing a threat of damage at the non-kinetic warfare level –  in our case, information warfare –  if the target country of the interference effort does not comply with Russian demands.[120] The campaign can be seen as a “gun placed on the table” and poses a threat that, at a later point, the interference campaign will be used aggressively when relevant decision points or elections take place.
   
   
2. Doppelganger-Israel fulfills Russia’s current needs. Israel is no longer central to Russian interests and there is no urgency on Moscow’s part for a more extensive campaign. Low efficiency is probably a general feature of the Doppelganger campaign in the short term and Israel is not an exception. Official Israeli protests and publications of research and media reports may serve as evidence that “the pressure on Israel is working.” This hypothesis illustrates that any official protest about Doppelganger should be weighed carefully and protest should be delivered only when it is clear that the benefits  outweigh the risks.
   
   
3. Doppelganger is a part of Russia’s larger information operations in Israel. While investigative reports about Doppelganger find that it occasionally promotes messages and “products” through other Russian disinformation actors. The success of the Russian interference campaign must be measured over time and take a broad look at all Russian activity in Israel, not juston a single interference campaign. It can be argued that keeping Israel in a state in which it “swings” between Russia and the West concerning security assistance to Ukraine and exercises relative caution in its relations with Moscow may be perceived by the Kremlin as a successful utilization of the entire Russian toolbox vis-à-vis the Israeli government.
   
   
4. A Russian global effort to project power. Russian information warfare through interference campaigns, cyber, intelligence activities, and diplomacy is helping Russia maintain, in a cost-effective manner, its image as a superpower at a time when it is embroiled in a war in Ukraine and a crisis with the West. So, the more Russia engages in active interference campaigns worldwide, and the more media and government agencies engage with Russian interference, the stronger the image of global Russian power.
   
   
5. Bureaucratic dynamics: Doppelganger is a vehicle for government grants for the SDA and its colleagues, and they present it internally as a success story worth replicating. Thomas Rid, a leading scholar of Russian and Soviet information warfare, is convinced, that the Kremlin is the main target audience of Doppelganger and that all of SDA activity is built around fooling the PA into believing that the campaign has a serious impact. In his opinion, many more people read about Doppelganger messages from the press than from the campaign’s dissemination channels. Rid warns the disinformation researchers against exaggerating the significance of foreign interferance actors and thus helping them to secure funding from their customers.[121]

The relatively limited scope of Doppelganger’s activity in Israel might change rapidly based on the campaign operators’ assessment of the situation and the Doppelganger campaign can also be integrated with other tools. Israel is a relatively convenient country for Russia in terms of its ability to operate a variety of Russian information warfare tools, including those outside the digital sphere. Russian representatives in Israel can stage provocations and combine them with media activity in light of a large number of Russian speakers, a large number of flights to Russia, and the absence of published restrictions on the activity of intelligence agents. The latter enjoy diplomatic immunity in Israel, unlike in Western countries, where there have been large-scale expulsions of Russian spies disguised as diplomats  over the past five years.

Conclusions and Recommendations

This report focused only on one global disinformation campaign by Russia, out of dozens being run simultaneously.[122] This example is insightful, and unprecedented, due to the abundance of internal materials available. This wealth of materials allows us to study the campaign from the highest political echelon in the Kremlin, down to tactical interactions in social media. This in-depth test case helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Russian information warfare, as well as the limitations and opportunities for Western countermeasures. 

From the Israeli perspective, the Doppelganger campaign is another element in the complex web of relations between Moscow and Jerusalem, as the space for shared interests is rapidly shrinking, and as Russia is betting on coercive tools to further its interests. The Doppelganger affair and Russia’s conduct during the “Swords of Iron” war indicate that in Russian eyes Israel is no longer considered a “friendly country” –   even if it is not yet on Russia’s list of “unfriendly” countries (a formal status, which entails restrictions and sanctions).[123]

Moreover, the Russian interference campaign plays a role in eroding Holocaust memory and fueling antisemitism globally. This is an important moral issue, recognized by a broad international audience – including decision-makers – as a pillar of Israel’s global legitimacy.

Moscow probably believes that there is nothing unusual in the interference in Israel and that it is merely reacting to Israel’s distancing itself from it (Russia has reacted in a similar fashion toward other Western countries). Moreover, it is not certain that Russia has a cohesive top-down policy toward Israel. Doppelganger’s interference campaign in Hebrew may have been initiated by Kiriyenko’s team and continued undisturbed for more than a year, as Moscow did not face significant repercussions in its relations with Jerusalem.

The Israeli defense establishment has noted Doppelganger’s activities, yet Moscow has not been deterred from continuing its interference. Western countries and technology companies are also struggling to deter Russia and halt further interference campaigns.

This study suggests that the limited scale and efficiency of the Doppelganger operations in Israel could, ostensibly, be explained by several options:

• The campaign (along with other tools at Russia’s disposal) meets Moscow’s satisfaction in line with the goals it has set for itself: Israel continues to deny Ukraine lethal weapons, publicly confronts the Biden administration, and maintains a substantive dialogue with Russia. It also serves Russia’s global power image.
  
  
• The campaign does not currently resonate greatly in Israel but serves Moscow by demonstrating its ability to operate in the Israeli domestic arena. Given a pressing need, the Russians will be able to expand the campaign.
  
  
• The campaign may have failed entirely, serving only the Russian contractors who have managed to extract funds from the Russian government and gain its favor and appreciation.

Option C, even if correct, cannot serve as a reference point for the Israeli government. Israel’s domestic polarization exposes the country to foreign interference. This vulnerability existed before the “Swords of Iron” war but has intensified since. Now, not only Russia but also Iran,[124] China,[125] and radical Islamist elements[126] are actively working to exploit divisions within Israeli society. Their efforts are unlikely to be coordinated, but their cumulative activities can still produce negative synergies.

The “Swords of Iron” war has prompted a public and governmental debate in Israel how to reassess national security threats and how to allocate resources accordingly. However, the threat of foreign interference is not considered important and is overshadowed by other “more challenging” and urgent issues. Yet, the messages threaten the foundations of Israel’s democracy and its partnership with the United States.

Although the current impact of the Russian interference campaign in Israel may be limited, experience from other countries that have faced similar Russian operations demonstrates that such campaigns undermine internal stability and erode social cohesion and trust in institutions. This has been evident across nearly all European countries affected by Russian interference. In the United States, in 2016, the Trump administration faced scrutiny, being suspected of being elected with the help of Russian interference. Furthermore, the integration of AI-based tools in political interference campaigns is expected to intensify.[127]

Western countries invest significantly more effort than Israel in addressing interference operations. They have established institutions designed to counter these efforts and engage in tackling the threat. A former senior Ukrainian defense official asserted that the greatest threat to Ukraine from Russia was not military but rather information warfare.[128] In the U.S., the Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated in April 2024 that Russian interference campaigns profoundly impact their party and major media outlets.[129] Additionally, Viginum, the French watchdog that monitors and protects against foreign digital interference and which worksunder the French prime minister’s office, reported in July 2023 that Doppelganger’s interference campaign “threatens the fundamental interests of the French nation.”[130]

The Doppelganger test case emphasizes the ability of civil society to play a significant role in exposing the technical infrastructure of foreign inteference actors. It also shows the importance of U.S. proactivity, and behind the scenes international cooperation on this issue. . It was only after the U.S. Federal Government weighed in against Doppelganger before the elections that the Russian campaign suffered significant technical difficulties.

In contrast, Israel lacks a national strategy and relevant legislation to counter foreign interference. The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), which is responsible for handling such matters, has not been provided with a comprehensive set of regulatory tools. Additionally, the government’s collaboration with civil society organizations on this issue is still in its infancy.[131]

This article is not meant to incite alarmism[132] but to advocate for a serious and thoughtful approach to this crucial issue. Moscow’s interference in Israel’s internal affairs should be given greater consideration in the continuous assessment of Israel’s relations with Russia. There is no need for immediate public announcements of Israeli measures against Moscow, as this could send the Russians a signal that their interference campaign is having an effect. However, it is essential for the Israeli government to gain clarity on Russia’s hostile role and to counter and, ideally, stop such interference.

The SDA’s intent to leverage its campaign in Israel’s next elections, underscores the urgent need to develop an invigorated national response to foreign – particularly Russian – interference.

In this context, Israel should:

• Establish a national body designed to coordinate inter-agency efforts against foreign interference, address legislative gaps, and provide government institutions with the necessary enforcement powers. This governmental body should enhance cooperation with civil society and technology companies, as well as promote public education on critical information consumption.
  
  
• Work more closely with Western partners to dismantle the Doppelganger campaign and collaborate on holding Russia accountable for its interference operations. The mid-2024 successful countermeasures against the Russian campaign by the U.S. DOJ, technology companies and NGOs underscore the importance of joint action aimed at degrading the technological infrastructure of campaign operators.
  
  
• Refresh its toolkit so that it can impose costs on Moscow for its interference. Israel remains one of the few Western countries that still grants Russian representatives and citizens significant freedom of action, which is well appreciated by Russia.
  
  
• Formulate a strategy for discreet communications with the Russians on the external interference problem. Issuing warnings without imposing costs may be perceived in Moscow as feedback that the cognitive campaign is “painful” for Israeli decision-makers and may portray Israel as weak. If Israel issues a warning to Russia, it is important to make sure that the benefit derived from the protest/warning outweighs the potential damage if Russia disregards the warning.

Notes

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[1] Czerny, Milan, “Putin is no longer a ‘friend’”: This is how Russia’s cyber and fake news attacks against Israel operated,” Shomrim and N12, December 15, 2023 (Hebrew). https://tinyurl.com/5e8t52nr

[2] Fridman, Ofer, “Defining Foreign Influence and Interference”, INSS, the Intelligence Methodology Research Institute, and the Ministry of Intelligence, January 4, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/bdhjzrm7

[3] Research for this paper was conducted between January and October 2024. By this time, social networks had already taken down many Russian messages. The author received screenshots of some of the messages that are no longer available on Facebook or Twitter/X and some are “articles” impersonating legitimate media outlets received from other researchers monitoring Doppelganger’s activity.

[4] “Affidavit in Support of Seizure Warrant,” The US Department of Justice, September 4, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/283b4f2w; “Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere,” The US Department of Justice, September 4, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/387hndyv

[5] On September 16, 2024, several international media venues published investigative reports on thousands of SDA internal documents. Süddeutsche Zeitung was named the origin of the documents. The source was probably the FBI, which published similar documents 12 days earlier, or other western intelligence agency. Blau, Uri and Czerny, Milan, “Russia’s Influence Campaign in Israel: Creating New Party, Stoking Social Discord, Fueling Arab Discontent, and Straining Foreign Relations,” Shomrim, September 16, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5h88we2z. “The Battle for the Minds of the Inhabitants of Planet Earth” (in Russian), Dossier, September 16, 2024. https://dossier.center/fake-fabric/; “Double Take: A Doppelgänger Lit Review (Because the World Did Not Need Another Solo Report),” InfoEpi Lab, April 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5n6khxrs  

[6] Adamsky, Dmitry (Dima), The Russian Way of Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War. Stanford University Press, 2023.

[7]  Belton, Catherine, “Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.”, Washington Post, April 17, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/muue3xbs

[8] DiResta, Renee, Shaffer, Kris, Ruppel, Becky, Sullivan, David and Matney, Robert, “The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency”, University of Nebraska, October 2019. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/senatedocs/2

[9] Garner, Ian, “The West Is Still Oblivious to Russia’s Information War”, Foreign Policy, March 9, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/2ubkjhpf

[10] Arenina, Katya, Korostelev, Alexei, Rubin, Mikhail, Maglov, Mikhail, Badanin, Roman and others, “Advisory Board: A Guide to Putin’s Experts”, Proekt, December 20, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/h2euv33r

[11]Falkov, Yaakov, “Russian Cognitive Warfare in the War in Ukraine (2022-2023)” (in Hebrew), Institute of Intelligence Methodology, March 14, 2023, pp. 17–21, 93-107. https://tinyurl.com/4az38cuj

[12]Alaphilippe, Alexandre, Machado, Gary, Miguel, Raquel and Poldi, Francesco, EU DisinfoLab in partnership with Qurium, September 27, 2022. https://www.disinfo.eu/doppelganger

[13] Unless said otherwise, the figures are examples from the Doppelganger campaign in Israel.

[14] Bot Blocker X Channel, May 22, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/nx7amb56

[15] “Sombres Influences: Russian and Iranian Influence Networks Target French Elections,” Insikt Group, June 28, 2024, p. 4. https://tinyurl.com/yc8hfwtk

[16] Viginum, “Summary of the information threat targeting the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” SGDSN, September 13, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yhjh87p7

[17] “Affidavit,” pp. 216-254.

[18] For example, the Doppelganger campaign in France simultaneously conveyed messages to the far right and the far left. “Mid-year Doppelgänger information operations in Europe and the US,” Harfang Labs, July 25, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4hkuhc4t; “Pronouncing Nonsense in French”, InfoEpi Lab, May 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4m4c47hs

[19] Blau and Czerny, Ibid.

[20] Nimmo, Ben and Agranovich, David, “Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from China and Russia”, Facebook, September 27, 2022. https://tinyurl.com/4emaxxrr

[21]  “Information manipulation in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine: EU lists seven individuals and five entities,” Council of the EU, July 28, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/3pzwucwu

[22]  “Affidavit,” pp. 20-25.

[23]  Kupfer, Matthew, “Investigation: Who is Ilya Gambashidze, the man the US government accuses of running a Kremlin disinformation campaign?”, VOA, May 09, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5xpscbne

[24]  Klienty (in Russian), Agenstvo Sotsial’nogo Proektirovania. https://sp-agency.ru/clients

[25] Thomas Rid channel on YouTube, “Social Design Agency Internal Promotion Video,” September 30, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGF7-siZ9ac

[26] “Kremlin bot network churns out anti-Semitic content ‘warning’ of attack on Jews at 2024 Paris Olympics”, The Insider, November 21, 2023. https://theins.ru/en/news/266962

[27] “Russia’s sprawling wartime fake news machine,” Meduza, September 25, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/mssb259k

[28] Belton, Catherine, “Russia is working to subvert French support for Ukraine, documents show”, Washington Post, December 30, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4wvxw3j2; “Affidavit,” pp. 20-25.

[29] Before being appointed to his current position in the Presidential Executive in 2016, Kiriyenko ran the state-owned Rosatom for more than a decade. Previously, in 1998, when he was only 36 years old, he served for six months as prime minister of Russia (during the severe economic crisis of the post-Soviet period, in which the government was declared bankrupt). Kiriyenko’s standing has grown stronger in recent years, but debate continues over whether he has an independent political base or (more likely) is a representative of a powerful group close to President Putin led by the billionaires brothersYuri and Mikhail Kovalchuk. As part of a change of government in May 2024, when Putin began his fifth term as president, Kiriyenko retained his position, while the Kovalchuk family was notably strengthened, with Boris Kovalchuk, Yuri’s son, appointed head of the Russian National Control Authority (Schetnaia palata), a position roughly equivalent to the State Comptroller in Israel.

[30] “Institute named after Kiriyenko,” (in Russian), Meduza, August 26, 2024.https://tinyurl.com/4bx24x5e

[31] Arribas, Cristina M., Arcos, Rubén, Gértrudix, Manuel, Mikulski, Kamil, Hernández-Escayola, Pablo, Teodor, Mihaela, Novăcescu, Elena, Surdu, Ileana, Stoian, Valentin and García-Jiménez and Antonio, “Information manipulation and historical revisionism: Russian disinformation and foreign interference through manipulated history-based narratives”, July 27, 2023, 3:121. https://tinyurl.com/tk7vvepn; Pakhaliuk, Konstantin, “Unpredictable past: How the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’ has become a new weapon in Russia’s historical propaganda”, Novaya Gazeta, February 13, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4zzc9pa2

[32] “Pronouncing Nonsense in German”, InfoEpi Lab, May 2024. https://tinyurl.com/anadttka; Bot Blocker X Channel, June 9, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mhjhk4ey

[33] Belton, “Russia is working…,” Ibid.

[34] Belton, Catherine, “Kremlin runs disinformation campaign to undermine Zelensky, documents show”, Washington Post, February 16, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3fhjerhf

[35] Ben-Am, Ari, “Memetic Warfare Weekly,” Substack, April 17, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4nesx6my; Arieh Kovler X Channel, April 12, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/2vuh3ct3

[36] Private conversation with the Bot Blocker X Channel’ anonymous operator, June 3, 2024; Kahan, Raphael, “Fake News: Russia Spread Fake Stories from Israeli News Sites,” Ynet, July 20, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/2rbda2ey; “Doppelgänger NG Cyberwarfare campaign”, ClearSky, February 22, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/2xnsud2r

[37] This document was anonymously leaked in December 2023. Its authenticity was proved by the US Justice Department publication in September 2024, which contains an almost identical, probably later, version of the “Normal’nyy Izrail” paper. The US publication will be used as a basis for a current study. The December 2023 leaked version served as a basis for the Hebrew version of this study. “Affidavit,” pp. 256-268; “Normal’nyy Izrail,” VChK-OGPU Telegram Channel, 21 December 2023. https://t.me/vchkogpu/44504.

[38] September 16, 2024, publications mentioned 100 people being involved in the Doppelganger staff, with probably only one Hebrew speaker. Campaign plans for several countries in disclosed SDA documents suggest a copy-paste approach to different societies with minimal cultural adaptation.

[39] The Rafi Smith Institute, a polling firm, surveyed the Israeli public’s attitudes toward foreign policy issues in July 2022 and August 2023. Both surveys indicate a tendency to favor Ukraine among the left and an increase in support for neutrality among the right. The differences are particularly sharp at the extremes, with over 50% of Labor and Meretz voters in both polls supporting Ukraine. The 2023 survey showed an increase in support for Ukraine (an overall average of about 35% in the Jewish public in 2023 compared to 28% in 2022) and a reduction in support for neutrality (an average of about 46% in the Jewish public in 2023 compared to 56% in 2022). “Findings of a Poll on Israel’s Foreign Policy 2023,” Mitvim, June 24, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4w2efu8m; “Findings of a Poll on Israel’s Foreign Policy,” Mitvim, August 24, 2022. https://tinyurl.com/454wyput

[40] Morganti, Caroline, “Recent Polls of US Jews Reflect Polarized Community”, Jewish Currents, June 29, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4fp9ye8rhttps://jewishcurrents.org/recent-polls-of-us-jews-reflect-polarized-community

[41]  Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz and Willems, Bastiaan, “Putin’s Abuse of History: Ukrainian ‘Nazis’, ‘Genocide’, and a Fake Threat Scenario”, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 35:1, 1-10, 2022. https://tinyurl.com/2m5jk2ar 

[42] Yad Vashem: “Russia comparisons to Nazis are wrong. Condemning the contempt for the Holocaust,” Ynet, February 27, 2022. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/s1braztl5

[43] Baron, David, “Israel and the Holocaust are just cards in the Russian game,” Israel Today, January 23, 2024 (Hebrew).  https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/geopolitics/article/15145758

[44] Almas, Dean Shmuel, “Clashes in South Tel Aviv: Why Did They Break Out and What’s Happening in Eritrea?”, Globes, September 2, 2023 (Hebrew). https://tinyurl.com/bdhn9nta

[45] Rakov, Daniel, “The war in Gaza: A Nadir in Russian-Israeli Relations,” Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, October 22, 2023. https://jiss.org.il/he/rakov-gaza-war-israel-russia-relations

[46]  Czerny, Ibid.

[47]  Czerny, Ibid.

[48]  Earlier content may have been circulated, but since been removed.

[49] Meta Ad Library, October 5-9, 2023 (the items are not available anymore).

[50] “Fact Check: Washington Post headline about Ukraine and Hamas weapon supply is fake”, Reuters, November 25, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/mtyjz6um

[51] “Seven with Ayala Hasson,” Kan-11 TV, October 28, 2023 (Hebrew). https://tinyurl.com/3prk9xfn

[52]  Meta Ad Library, October 11, 2023 (the item is not available anymore).

[53] Stanovaya, Tatiana, “Why the Russian Authorities Failed to Stop Pogroms in the Caucasus”, Carnegie Politika, October 31, 2023. https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90873

[54] Iserovich, Hayim, “The European Power That Stands by Israel: ‘We Oppose an Immediate Ceasefire,'” Maariv, October 7, 2024 (Hebrew). https://www.maariv.co.il/news/world/Article-1089906

[55] Meta Ad Library, October 10, 2023 (the item is not available anymore). 

[56] Lemire, Jonathan, Toosi, Nahal and Ward, Alexander, “Netanyahu may not last, Biden and aides increasingly believe”, Politico, November 1, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4ns7k9n9

[57] Meta Ad Library, November 4, 2023 (the item is not available anymore). 

[58] “Articles Shared by Probable Doppelgänger Accounts”, InfoEpi Lab, May 2024. https://tinyurl.com/txa85exf

[59] “Doppelgänger Responds to U.S. Funding Vote”, InfoEpi Lab, April 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3e46x5dv

[60] “How Russia Uses EU Companies for Propaganda,” Qurium, July 11, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/29ahz4s4; Bot Blocker X Channel, July 23, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3463y524

[61] Czerny, Milan and Shomrim, “The Olympics of the Fake: The Israeli delegation is in the crosshairs of the Russian chaos networks,” N12, August 4, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/ynt2mxsf

[62] Blau and Czerny, Ibid.

[63] This event is reminiscent of the legacy of the Soviet KGB, which used antisemitism in its influence campaigns in the West. Between 1959 and 1960, the KGB sought to damage the image of West Germany by portraying it as antisemitic. East German agents were sent to West Germany and desecrated Jewish sites, including with Nazi graffiti. Neo-Nazi hooligans were also inspired by the incidents, and over 800 such incidents were registered in this period. Andrew, Christopher M. and Oleg. Gordievsky. 1990. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. New York, NY, HarperCollinsPublisher, pp. 463–464.

[64] “«Mains rouges» sur le Mur des Justes du Mémorial de la Shoah: la Russie mise en cause”, Liberation, May 21, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5n8n839d; “Anti-Semitic graffiti appears in Paris once again – similar drawings were previously ordered by the Kremlin”, The Insider, May 30, 2024. https://theins.press/en/news/272027

[65] Czerny, Milàn, Michlin-Shapir, Vera and Siman-Tov, David. “Russian Influence Campaign Against Israel: Strategic and Cognitive Implications,” INSS Insight No. 1852, May 1, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/23x2p2za

[66] Baz, Itamar, “Walla? Da!” (In Hebrew), The 7^th eye, February 23, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mr43fu38

[67] Yadlin, Amos, Magen, Zvi and Michlin-Shapir, Vera, “The Crisis Over the Downed Russian Plane – What Next?”, INSS Insight No. 1095, September 27, 2018. https://tinyurl.com/3kwzv9b8

[68] Michlin-Shapir, Vera and Rakov, Daniel, “Pray for Naama – Russian Information War Against Israel,” INSS, July 24, 2024. https://www.inss.org.il/publication/naama/

[69]  Rakov, Ibid.

[70] In December 2022, Putin spoke with Netanyahu to congratulate him on his election victory, but this was before he assumed the post of prime minister.

[71] VChK-OGPU Telegram Channel, December 21, 2023. https://t.me/vchkogpu/44504

[72]  “Affidavit,” pp. 256-268.

[73] Belton, “Kremlin runs…,” Ibid.

[74] Insikt Group, “Obfuscation and AI Content in the Russian Influence Network ‘Doppelgänger’ Signals Evolving Tactics”, Recorded Future, December 5, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/mvanpjcc

[75] Laine, Martin and Morozova, Anastasia, “Leaked Files from Putin’s Troll Factory: How Russia Manipulated European Elections,”Vsquared, September 16, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mry3tn72

[76] “Israel’s former ambassador to Armenia and Moldova Eliyahu Yerushalmi Israel’s geopolitical situation – Iran, Russia and Ukraine” (in Hebrew), Alex Zeitlin’s YouTube channel, May 28, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3ajnmh76; “Former Sayeret Matkal commander Lt. Col. Doron Avital on Israel’s geopolitical situation” (in Hebrew), Alex Zeitlin’s YouTube channel, May 14, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/h8hu9ehz; “Brigadier General (Res.) Israel Shapir – Lines for a settlement between Russia and Ukraine” (in Hebrew), Alex Zeitlin’s YouTube channel, April 16, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yckdhwj9

[77] “Doppelgänger Responds to U.S. Funding Vote”, InfoEpi Lab, April 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3e46x5dv

[78] VChK-OGPU Telegram Channel, December 19, 2023. https://t.me/vchkogpu/44477

[79] VChK-OGPU Telegram Channel, December 21, 2023. https://t.me/vchkogpu/44504

[80] “Affidavit,” pp. 215-236.

[81] VChK-OGPU Telegram Channel, February 29, 2024. https://t.me/vchkogpu/46167

[82] “Affidavit,” p. 268.

[83] Insikt Group, “Obfuscation…”, Ibid.; “Disrupting deceptive uses of AI by covert influence operations,” OpenAI, May 30, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5e2auxu7

[84] Czerny and Shomerim, Ibid.

[85] “OOO ‘GK Struktura’ “, RBC, April 10, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/heb2hr38; “OOO ‘ASP’ “, RBC, April 26, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mpbrub59. An investigation into SDA documents found that between 2013 and 2020, Gambashidze won at least $2.7 million in Russian state tenders. Kupfer, Ibid.

[86] Demeuse, Rodrigue, “The Russian War on Truth: Defending Allied and Partner Democracies Against the Kremlin’s Disinformation Campaigns”, NATO PA, October 8, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/3kv9xhsc

[87] “Affidavit,” Ibid.

[88] Châtelet Valentin and Osadchuk, Roman, “Doppelganger targets Ukrainian and French audiences via Facebook ads”, DFRLAB, March 12, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/28kuhsvf

[89] Qurium Media X Channel, August 13, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/25czcnxj

[90] “Common Spammer Tricks,” Process Software. https://tinyurl.com/mr33pj95

[91] “Vast Networks of Fake Accounts Raise Questions About Meta’s Compliance with the EU’s DSA”, Reset, October 2023. https://tinyurl.com/2fpxr2kv; Bouchaud, Paul, Faddoul, Marc and Buse, Çetin Raziye, “No Embargo in Sight: Meta Lets Pro-Russia Propaganda Ads Flood the EU”, AI Forensics, April 17, 2024. https://aiforensics.org/work/meta-political-ads

[92]Antonyuk, Daryna, “Doppelgänger operation rushes to secure itself amid ongoing detections, German agency says,” The Record, August 15th, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/y7fajpb7

[93] “Justice Department..,” Ibid.

[94] Von Bernhard, Max, Hock, Alexej and Thust, Sarah, “Doppelganger: CORRECTIV investigations bring Russian propaganda campaign to a halt,” CORRECTIV, November 15, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3ew8cdws

[95]  Insikt Group, “Operation Overload Impersonates Media to Influence 2024 US Election,” Recorded Future, October 23, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3nb988fc

[96] “Putin would eat you for lunch” (In Russian), Novaya Gazeta, September 11, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mtrvffut

[97] Western media published extensive reports on Doppelganger’s attempts to influence the EU June 2024 parliamentary election.  In response, Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti had grinned in its op-ed (the SDA and its partners probably considered that a sign of official approval) that “no doppelgangers are needed when European leaders behave in the most hypocritical manner possible.” Further favorable op-eds, mentioning Kiriyenko by name, were published in RIA-Novosti after the U.S. government’s September publication against Doppelganger. Akopov, Petr, “Moscow has scared Europe again” (in Russian), RIA-Novosti, June 6, 2024. https://ria.ru/20240606/vybory-1950774099.html; Karaeva, Elena, “The third world war, digital war, has begun,” (in Russian), RIA-Novosti, September 7, 2024. https://ria.ru/20240907/voyna-1971143067.html

Nikiforova, Victoria, “The West has discovered Russia’s most dangerous weapon,” (in Russian), RIA-Novosti, September 9, 2024. https://ria.ru/20240909/informatsiya-1971443667.html

[98] “The Battle,” Ibid.

[99] Eyal, Nadav, “Israeli Intelligence Officials Call on Russia: Stop Online Influence Operations,” Ynet, July 21, 2023. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hks3ymd9h

[100] Bouchaud et. Al., “No Embargo…”

[101]  Blau and Czerny, Ibid.

[102] Joffre, Tzvi, “Israel has no right to defend itself, says Russia at UN”, Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/427z4mau; “Israel, Ukraine ‘fight the same battle against international law’ says Russian UN diplomat,” i24NEWS, February 27, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3ctcnu7k; Slisco, Aila, “Russia Calls on UN to Sanction Israel”, Newsweek, April 19, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/ecz9kjfw

[103] Blau and Czerny, Ibid.

[104] Rosen, Guy, “Raising Online Defenses Through Transparency and Collaboration”, Facebook, August 29, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/ywnpfufa

[105] “Doppelganger Strikes Back: Unveiling FIMI Activities Targeting European Parliament Elections,”EUvsDisinfo, June 19, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4c628mc7; “Malign Influence Threats Mount Ahead of US 2024 Elections,” Recorded Future, August 13, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3bpat2w3

[106] Mandić, Josip and Klarić, Darijo, “Case Study of the Russian Disinformation Campaign During the War in Ukraine,” National security and the future, Vol. 24 No. 2, 2023. https://doi.org/10.37458/nstf.24.2.5

[107] Erlich, Aaron and Garner, Celvin, “Is pro-Kremlin Disinformation Effective? Evidence from Ukraine”, The International Journal of Press/Politics, 28 (1), 2023: 5-28. https://tinyurl.com/2rdxpk3x

[108] Wiener, Assaf, “National Preparedness for Foreign Influence and Intervention through Social Networks: Global Findings and an Israeli Snapshot,” INSS and the Intelligence Methodology Research Institute, March 27, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/3rdj7x7j

[109] Nimmo, Ben, “The Breakout Scale: Measuring the impact of influence operations,” Brookings, September 2020. https://tinyurl.com/y749f6ut; Silva, Mirela, Luiz Giovanini, Juliana Fernandes, Daniela Oliveira, and Catia S. Silva. “What Makes Disinformation Ads Engaging? A Case Study of Facebook Ads from the Russian Active Measures Campaign”, Journal of Interactive Advertising, 23(3) (2023): 221–40. https://tinyurl.com/ycycr7vv

[110] Belton, “Kremlin runs..,” Ibid. https://tinyurl.com/2uss8vcd

[111]“Slugi Doppelgangera” (in Russian), Vot Tak TV, May 21, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5y9wkxeh

[112]  “Large-scale Russian disinformation campaign “Doppelgänger” – Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution reveals technical details,” BayLFV, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yz9dn6e6

[113] Bot Blocker X Channel, March 27, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/8mnr4dhd

[114] Fake Reporter X Channel, May 28, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4vxnh2ev; Kupfer, Matthew, “Russia-tailed AI-generated deepfake videos target US presidential elections, NATO”, Polygraph, May 29, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yc6xcksu

[115] “Israel”, InfoEpi Lab, April 2024. https://tinyurl.com/msw9bu9d; “Sombres,” Ibid.

[116] “Affidavit,” p. 156.

[117] Laine and Morozova, Ibid.

[118] “The Battle,” Ibid.

[119] “Affidavit,” pp. 25, 110.

[120] Adamsky, pp. 39–56

[121] Rid, Thomas, “The Lies Russia Tells Itself”, Foreign Affairs, September 30, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yahre5kh

[122] Maxime Audinet X Channel, October 4, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yyyuxrv9

[123] Russian government approves list of unfriendly countries and territories”, TASS, March 7, 2022.

https://tass.com/politics/1418197

[124] Kabir, Omer, “‘The enemy has settled within us’: This is how the Iranian network of influence works to divide Israelis,” (In Hebrew), Calcalist, December 19, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4p7ukx57

[125] Eichner, Itamar and Fuchs, Nina, “Antisemitic Content and ‘Deliberate Brainwashing’: Will TikTok Be Banned in Israel?”, Ynet, April 25, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/7evm34j8

[126] Siman-Tov, David, Perach, Michal, Yasur, Inbar and Winter, Ofir, “Islamist ‘Civilian’ Influence Campaign Targeting Israel,” INSS, April 2, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/5n8ry7ky

[127] Thomas, Elise, ““Hey, fellow humans!”: What can a ChatGPT campaign targeting pro-Ukraine Americans tell us about the future of generative AI and disinformation?” ISD, December 5, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/b7ab8e9d; Funk, Allie, Shahbaz, Adrian and Vesteinsson, Kian, “Freedom on the Net: The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence”, Freedom House, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4zk5zrjn

[128] Author conversation with a former senior Ukrainian official, February 2024.

[129] Blake, Aaron, “Top GOPers’ extraordinary comments on their party and Russian propaganda”, Washington Post, April 8, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/yubj2skf

[130] “RRN: une campagne numérique de manipulation de l’information complexe et persistante”, SGDSN, June 13, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/4tdwb4vm

[131] Wiener, Ibid.

[132] Belogolova, Olga, Foster, Lee, Rid, Thomas and Wilde, Gavin, “Don’t Hype the Disinformation Threat Downplaying the Risk Helps Foreign Propagandists – but So Does Exaggerating It”, Foreign Affairs, May 3, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/8aba3hjv