The media have obtained internal documents from the Russian Agency for Social Design (ASP), which creates disinformation campaigns on behalf of the Kremlin. Their analysis shows how Moscow's propaganda machine works from the inside.
The seized documents of the Moscow consulting firm Agentstwo Socialnogo Projektirowania (Social Design Agency) were accessed by, among others, German media Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR, as well as the Estonian portal Delfi. Their authenticity was anonymously confirmed by Western intelligence. The analysis of the seized files shows that ASP is involved in designing and preparing campaigns spreading false Russian narratives – among others for Ukrainians and Germans. One of the goals of the ASP is to make Germans “as afraid of the future as possible,” writes the daily Tageschau.
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Russia. What do the ASP documents contain?
The Social Design Agency, which has been operating since 2001, is subject to sanctions in the EU and USA. Officially, it specializes in “socio-political projects”. Its head is Ilya Gambashidze. American services consider him one of the main figures in the Kremlin's information war with the West. In one of the disclosed materials, he is wearing a military blouse with patches on it with the inscriptions: “Russian ideological units” and “commander of special forces”. In the background of the recording, a voiceover can be heard, who says that there is no point in hiding anymore, because the “Doppelganger” campaign has been exposed by French intelligence. As part of this large-scale Russian disinformation operation, known in the West as Doppelganger, fake websites were created that pretended to be well-known media, such as the French “Le Monde” or the German “Der Spiegel”.
The radiosvoboda.org portal reveals another recording of the agency, which shows how its team works. Every day, 24 employees analyze articles in six languages ​​in Western media – both pro-Russian and anti-Russian. The second line of work is research on the target groups of Russian disinformation. Then comes the practical application of this knowledge: preparing false narratives wrapped in articles taking into account the style of the selected country's media, posts on social media, and even caricatures or memes. One of the files, titled “Productivity Statistics”, shows that from January to April 2024, Gambashidze's team created 39,899 articles, graphics, forged government documents, posts, videos and memes.
The American services believe that the ASP's activities are supervised on behalf of the Russian authorities by Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the Russian presidential administration. Vladimir Putin.
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