Russia behind spread of coronavirus disinformation, U.S. officials say

Healthcare workers test patients in their cars in Las Vegas.

July 28, 2020 3:50 PM PT

WASHINGTON — Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service, known as GRU, have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort reaching American and other Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence.

Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites singled out Tuesday published about 150 articles regarding the pandemic response, including coverage aimed either at propping up Russia or denigrating the United States.

Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were “Russia’s Counter COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Detente,” which suggested that Russia had given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and “Beijing Believes COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon,” which amplified statements by the Chinese.

The disclosure comes as the spread of disinformation, including by Russia, becomes an urgent concern heading into November’s presidential election. U.S. officials seek to avoid a repeat of the 2016 contest, when Russia launched a covert social media campaign to divide American public opinion and to favor then-candidate Donald Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The U.S. government’s chief counterintelligence executive warned in a rare public statement Friday about Russia’s continued use of internet trolls to advance its goals.

Politics aside, the twin crises buffeting the U.S. and much of the world — the pandemic and race relations and protests — have offered fertile territory for misinformation or outright falsehoods. Trump has come under scrutiny for sharing misinformation about a disproven drug for treating the coronavirus in videos that were taken down by Twitter and Facebook.

Officials described the Russian disinformation as part of an ongoing and persistent effort to advance false narratives and cause confusion. They did not say whether the effort behind these particular websites was directly related to the November election, though some of the coverage appeared to denigrate Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and does call to mind Russian efforts in 2016 to inflame race relations in America and drive corruption allegations against U.S. political figures.

Though U.S. officials previously warned about the spread of disinformation tied to the pandemic, they went further Tuesday by singling out a particular information agency that is registered in Russia, InfoRos and that operates a series of websites — InfoRos.ru, Infobrics.org and OneWorld.press — that have leveraged the pandemic to promote anti-Western objectives and to spread disinformation.

An email to InfoRos was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The sites promote their narratives in a sophisticated but insidious effort that U.S. officials liken to money laundering, where stories in well-written English — and often with pro-Russian sentiment and anti-U.S. sentiment — are cycled through other news sources to conceal their origin and enhance the legitimacy of the information.

The sites also amplify stories that originate elsewhere, the government officials said.

Beyond the coronavirus, there’s also a focus on America, global politics and topical stories.

A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling major American cities read “Chaos in the Blue Cities,” accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up with the tough-on-crime approach of Mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg “must adapt to life in high-crime urban areas.”

Another story carried the headline of “Ukrainian Trap for Biden,” and claimed that “Ukrainegate” — a reference to stories surrounding Biden’s son Hunter’s former ties to a Ukraine gas company — “keeps unfolding with renewed vigors.”

Two individuals who have also held leadership roles at InfoRos, identified Tuesday as Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have previously served in a GRU unit specializing in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials said.

InfoRos and One World’s ties to the Russian state have attracted scrutiny in the past from European disinformation analysts.

In 2019, a European Union task force that studies disinformation campaigns identified One World as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets.” The task force noted that One World’s content often parrots the Russian state agenda on issues including the war in Syria.

A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence. The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some financial connections between InfoRos and the government.

“InfoRos is evolving in a shady gray zone, where regular information activities are mixed with more controversial actions that could be quite possibly linked to the Russian state’s information operations,” the report’s authors concluded.

On its English-language Facebook page, InfoRos describes itself as an “Information agency: world through the eyes of Russia.”