USA. Kamala Harris is the Kremlin's “favorite.” Expert: Vladimir Putin is a troll

– Vladimir Putin is a troll. I think that this “support”, if you can call it that, should be taken with a grain of salt – says Johns Hopkins University disinformation researcher Prof. Olga Belogolova. – He is trolling us and we should be careful not to take it as some kind of serious statement. He probably thinks it's funny that anyone is even discussing who he “supports” – she added.

Belogolova, who in the past dealt with combating influence operations at Facebook, commented in this way on the information disclosed by the administration USA attempts by Russia to interfere in the American elections and Vladimir Putin's support for the Democratic candidate.

Putin on Thursday ironically stated that the Kremlin's “favourite” in the upcoming elections was Joe Bidenbut since he withdrew his candidacy and encouraged support for his vice president, he “supports her too”. He expressed hope that she will not impose on Russia as many sanctions as Donald Trump.

Putin's words came a day after the US prosecutor's office revealed the Kremlin's extensive information operations aimed at, among other things, influencing the US election campaign.

Under one of them, run by RT TV head Margarita Simonyan, the Kremlin channel paid a total of $10 million to a pro-Trump company and columnists for spreading content consistent with the Kremlin's line, including criticism of aid for Ukraine.

According to internal documents published by the prosecutor's office, the authors of another campaign, Ghostwriter, stated that Russia should make “maximum efforts” to ensure that the views on the war of Donald Trump's supporters prevail in the public debate.

Influencers, fake social media accounts and portals posing as regional media in key electoral states were allegedly used for this purpose.

According to Belogolova, these actions are an “old and proven” Kremlin strategy, used during the Cold War. “Shell organizations and agents of influence were the two main techniques used during the Cold War, and this is a continuation of these types of techniques,” she said.

“We've also seen these types of tactics used before in more contemporary election-related operations. Take, for example, some of the activities we saw in the 2018 US election, where actors associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency helped provide funding and support for protests in the US,” the expert explained.

However, she stressed that the American authorities, unlike in previous years, did a “great job” of exposing and highlighting Russian activities. “They not only took specific actions, but they presented evidence in extremely detailed documents and indictments. They managed to strategically communicate these activities without inadvertently strengthening the campaign they are trying to thwart and politicizing the topic. This builds trust and resilience in society,” the researcher said.