Experts say Russian group spread conspiracies about Kate

(CNN) — The truth, as is often the case, was not as strange as many thought. After weeks of frantic conspiracies about why Catherine, Princess of Wales, stayed out of the public eye for so long, she revealed the reason: She was diagnosed with cancer, was in the early stages of treatment and it was time to tell. It was taken, friends. Small children.

The last three months have been difficult for Kate and her family. But for others, they may have been an opportunity.

“There was a whirlwind of speculation going on, which provides a great place to be if you’re a foreign actor and want to get involved,” Martin Innes, a disinformation expert at Cardiff University in Wales, told CNN. “It’s actually the ideal situation.”

Ince and his investigative team linked 45 social media accounts posting false claims about the princess to a Kremlin-affiliated disinformation campaign that was already spreading conspiracies about Russia’s war in Ukraine and French President Emmanuel Macron. Such operations are aimed at “destabilizing” Russia’s Western adversaries and “undermining confidence” in its institutions, Innes said.

Britain’s relations with Russia have long been ambiguous. Despite the hostility between London and Moscow, the British are happy to serve the oligarchs of the former Soviet Union and welcome their money. A 2020 British parliamentary report found “abundant evidence of Russian interference” in its democratic processes, saying that Russian influence had become the “new normal”.

Cardiff researchers have led a large disinformation research program since 2018, but began investigating Kate’s conspiracies after noticing “unusual patterns in traffic data” and “spikes that came out of nowhere”.

Ines said, “These accounts were not the original posts themselves, but rather were responding with comments to posts about the Princess of Wales’s story, presenting content about the Ukrainian war, defaming Ukraine. Were, or were, celebrating the integrity of the Russian elections.”

The pattern of behavior was one his team had identified from a group of Russian actors they had previously studied.

The announcement of Kate’s cancer was televised in Britain. The picture is of a pub in London on March 22, 2024. (Credit: Aaron Chown/Press Association/AP)

The group is known as “Doppelganger”, a Kremlin-linked operation that has targeted audiences in the United States and Europe, including Ukraine. According to Innes, it is a commercial company that has been appointed to run the disinformation campaign. In late 2022, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta warned that the doppelganger was imitating major media outlets and creating fake articles.

Meta claimed to have dismantled the group, but its disinformation campaigns have since become more sophisticated. Last week, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Russians believed to be part of the doppelganger and their companies, accusing them of running “an extensive network of more than 60 websites” that promoted disinformation on behalf of the government. Russian.

Some conspiracies can be hatched from the beginning. Earlier this month, the British Embassy in Moscow was forced to refute insensitive rumors about King Charles III that began circulating wildly on Telegram and Russian media.

But the group often seeks to encourage stories that are already divisive. According to Innes, the rumors about Kate were a particularly easy target for the campaign, as much of the Western public already had a conspiratorial “mindset”.

Rasmus Claes Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, told CNN that disinformation campaigns “always jump on topics that are catchy and divisive, and that lead people to question the credibility and trustworthiness of But the effectiveness of the campaign, he added, is another question: “Anyway, most people see a lot of nonsense on the Internet and are quite skeptical.”

When Kensington Palace announced in January that Kate had scheduled abdominal surgery, the initial reaction in Britain was more surprise than skepticism. But speculation grew with each passing week on the public scene.

Effect of Kate’s photo

But inquiries from fans on social media turned into intrigue when the Palace published a photo of Kate and her three children on Mother’s Day. The photo which should have put an end to the rumors, gave fuel to the rumours. The public immediately recognized several inconsistencies in the image, such as blurry cuffs and a zipper that did not fit.

Within hours, several news agencies around the world removed the image from circulation, citing issues of manipulation. The next morning, Kate issued a message: “Like many amateur photographers, I experiment with editing from time to time.”

Anna George, who researches online disinformation at the Oxford Internet Institute, told CNN that “Russian disinformation campaigns seek to create confusion about who to trust,” and suggested that the debacle could be blamed on British institutions for the Kremlin. There might be a way to put it. Spread fake news.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder has long argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s way of maintaining power is through “strategic relativism.” Unable or unwilling to improve its country through domestic politics, it is content to tarnish the image of other countries, strengthening Russia’s position by weakening others.

Police officers stand guard outside the London clinic where Kate had surgery in January. (Credit: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images)

The Russian Foreign Office joined the conversation over the photo, saying that the British media and political system have “merged” to create “an ecosystem of lies”.

In a scathing statement, the ministry said the princess’s prolonged absence from public life “has once again exposed the rotten nature of the British political establishment, which is based on a desire to completely control public opinion.” ..through mass media and fake news.

Days after the Mother’s Day photo, Kate was seen with her husband, Prince William, at a farm shop in Windsor, near their home, on March 19.

A favorable moment for the Kremlin

Innes said he and his researchers noticed a sudden increase in activity over a single day — primarily on X, first on Twitter — in a way he said was “absolutely consistent with the doppelganger.” All the accounts identified by his team had similar names, were created at the same time, had very few followers and acted in a coordinated manner.

He said, “All 45 accounts had a naming convention beginning with the letter A or beginning with the letter B, like ‘Aardvark56’,” which was “enough to be able to validate the claim that we know who is behind it.” Is. “

The timing of the plots against Kate was also favorable to the Kremlin, just as Putin won a fifth term in power in an election held without credible opposition. According to Ince, bots added comments to messages about Kate’s health that questioned the validity of the Russian vote.

According to Innes, the fact that a conspiracy struck at the heart of the British ruling class at a time advantageous to Russia created a “sweet zone” for Kremlin-linked actors.

“Strategically, what they were trying to do was get their messages about the Russian elections and Ukraine across to the Western media world. But it was such a good story for them because it allowed them to achieve their strategic goal.” Given…to destabilize the United Kingdom and its Western allies”.