(CNN) — Russian intelligence ran a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian agents and influential US and Western targets, recently declassified US intelligence claims.
US intelligence agencies believe that the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) attempted to influence politics and public opinion in the West by ordering Russian civilians to establish relationships with influential American and Western individuals and then spread narratives supporting the Kremlin’s goals, hiding the FSB’s role through layers of apparently independent actors.
“These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small-scale, the overall goal is for American people to [y] Westerners present these seemingly organic ideas,” a US official authorized to discuss the material told CNN. “The influence operations of the co-opted are based mainly on personal relationships, they build trust in them and then they can take advantage of that to secretly push the FSB agenda.”
According to US intelligence, the campaigns have sometimes been effective in planting Russian narratives in the Western press. Maxim Grigoriev, director of a Russian NGO, made multiple speeches before the UN presenting a false study that claimed that the White Helmets humanitarian group, which operates in Syria, operated a black market in human organs and had faked chemical attacks by of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with whom Russia is allied. Those claims eventually surfaced in a television report by far-right network OANN in the United States, according to materials open source provided by the official.
CNN has contacted Grigoriev and OANN.
However, the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for Russian propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing.
- Flight data and video analysis suggest that an explosion likely brought down the plane allegedly carrying Wagner’s boss.
“At the end of the day, this target spreads the Russian influence operation and Russian propaganda to its public,” the US official said. “Ultimately, many of these people are individuals who are acting in ways that you could call unintentional: they don’t know who is seeding these narratives.”
Intelligence provides several examples of “co-opted” Russian civilians doing the FSB’s bidding.
One man, Andrey Stepanenko, founded a media project in 2014 that sponsored journalists from the US and the West to visit eastern Ukraine and learn a supposed “truth” about what was happening in the region. In fact, the FSB led their efforts and “almost certainly funded the project,” according to the declassified documents.
CNN was unable to reach Stepanenko for comment.
The US official also cited Natalia Burlinova, founder of a Russian NGO that routinely coordinated FSB-funded public diplomacy efforts aimed at influencing Western views. In 2018, she visited, held meetings and organized events at various American think tanks and universities in New York, Boston and Washington, work that was funded by the FSB, according to intelligence. Her conduct was already public: She was charged earlier this year with conspiring with an FSB agent to act as Russia’s illegal agent inside the United States, though she remains at large in Russia.
CNN has contacted Burlinova.
The official declined to offer details supporting the intelligence community’s claims that the FSB funds this type of operation, but noted that once officials were able to establish FSB endorsement, it is easy to trace the narratives they push in materials. open source.
“Once you know who these people are and their association with the FSB, by the nature of what they are doing, they have very, very public personalities,” the official said. “That’s why I would say it’s not really difficult to follow the threads.”
The US official declined to say whether Russia used these same tactics to try to influence the US election.
According to intelligence services, the FSB uses similar tactics to influence political opinion inside Russia. In one case, a Russian media figure named Anton Tsvetkov organized protests outside embassies in Moscow, including the US embassy, at the behest of the FSB. The protests fueled the Russian narrative of the war in Ukraine, “promoting the ‘Ukrainian Nazi’ narrative and blaming the United States and its allies for the deaths of children in Donbas,” while concealing the role of the Russian government, according to intelligence from USA
“The purpose of those protests was really designed to sell it to the Russian people,” the US official said.
