Declassified U.S. intelligence accuses Moscow of pushing propaganda through alternative websites as Russia refines techniques used in 2016.
WASHINGTON — Russian intelligence services have been spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, according to newly declassified intelligence, material that demonstrates how Moscow is continuing to try to influence Americans as the election draws closer.
Russian military intelligence, known as the G.R.U., has used its ties with a Russian government information center, InfoRos, and other websites to push out English-language disinformation and propaganda about the pandemic, such as amplifying false Chinese arguments that the virus was created by the United States military and articles that said Russia’s medical assistance could bring a new détente with Washington.
The disinformation efforts are a refinement of what Russia tried to do in 2016. The fake social media accounts and bots used by the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-backed groups to amplify false articles have proved relatively easy to stamp out. But it is far more difficult to stop the dissemination of such articles that appear on websites that seem legitimate, according to outside experts.
“Russian intelligence agencies are taking a more central role in disinformation efforts that Russia is pushing now,” said Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It is not the blunt force” of the operations mounted by the Internet Research Agency.
Two American officials described the newly declassified intelligence but would not provide the underlying reports about the activities of the G.R.U. and the S.V.R., Moscow’s equivalent of the C.I.A. They discussed the information on the condition of anonymity.
Last week, intelligence officials warned about Russian, Chinese and Iranian efforts to interfere with the election. While Democrats criticized the warning for a lack of specifics, officials promised to release more information.
While the disinformation efforts outlined on Tuesday by American officials were focused on the pandemic, security researchers said Russia continued to push disinformation on a variety of topics.
The government’s accusations came as Mandiant Threat Intelligence, part of the FireEye cybersecurity firm, reported that it had detected a parallel influence campaign in Eastern Europe intended to discredit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including disinformation about the coronavirus. While the Mandiant report did not specifically name Russia and its intelligence agencies, it noted that the campaign was “aligned with Russian security interests” in an effort to undermine NATO activities.
Facebook has begun labeling stories that appear on state-sponsored news sites like RT and Sputnik. But it is harder for the social media companies to identify and label news articles that are posted on conspiracy-minded sites, according to experts.
Many of the pieces created by Russian intelligence were published on InfoRos, a site controlled by the Russian government, and OneWorld.Press, a nominally independent site that United States officials said had ties to the G.R.U. American officials said other sites, such as GlobalResearch.ca, regularly amplify G.R.U. propaganda, but officials have not directly linked it to Russian intelligence.
United States government officials mostly described disinformation focused on the pandemic, but they also outlined ties between Russian intelligence and a think tank that had published articles on politics.
The Strategic Culture Foundation is directed by another Russian intelligence agency, the S.V.R., according to two American officials. The foundation and its ties to Russian intelligence are also being investigated by the F.B.I., according to another official.
In May, the foundation published an article critical of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration official who lost a primary race in June in New York for a seat in Congress.
Dr. Farkas said the Russians were continuing to repeat their efforts from 2016 to try to influence the election.
“They want to sow dissent and reduce confidence among Americans in our democracy and make democracy look bad worldwide,” she said. “They want to prevent people who are tough on Russia from coming into power.”
Michael Averko, a contributor to the foundation, did not return a request for comment, but he said in a recent mass email to reporters that he had been visited by the F.B.I. Mr. Averko said he told the F.B.I. that he did not know about any ties between the foundation and Russian intelligence, but that he doubted they existed.After the publication of this article, OneWorld.Press issued a statement saying any accusation that it worked for Russian intelligence was “categorically false.” “To the best of our knowledge,” its contributors have not been charged with crimes for cooperating with any foreign intelligence agency, the statement said.
Without evidence, OneWorld.Press claimed that the accusations about Russian intelligence’s propaganda efforts were being spread by officials who aimed to hurt President Trump’s re-election chances. “Everybody across the world knows that some members of the ‘deep state’ have their daggers out for Trump, and the president himself has even said as much on countless occasions,” it said.
American intelligence officials said the G.R.U.’s psychological warfare unit, known as Unit 54777 or the 72nd Special Service Center, was behind the propaganda campaigns that were often devised to obscure Moscow’s role in creating them. A 2018 report in The Washington Post linked InfoRos to the G.R.U.’s Unit 54777.
United States intelligence reports have identified two Russians, Denis V. Tyurin and Aleksandr G. Starunskiy, with ties to the G.R.U. and who make sure the messaging and disinformation drafted by the intelligence officials are pushed by InfoRos and on InfoBrics.org and OneWorld.Press.
Russian officials did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mr. Tyurin and Mr. Starunskiy, the American officials said, were in essence involved in a kind of information laundering, akin to money laundering. They take the messages from Russian intelligence and spread them on InfoRos, OnePress or another website.
The material created by the G.R.U. is then picked up by other websites that further spread it. Those websites are often on the fringes of the web, while some, like Global Research, have a significant following, American officials said.
The stories pushed by Russian intelligence appear to be written by native English speakers and do not stand out as products of a foreign influence campaign, American officials said.
From late May to early July, about 150 articles on the pandemic were published by the Russian intelligence-backed effort, American officials said.
OneWorld published pieces about how the pandemic was an experiment in manipulating the world. InfoRos, as well as the Tass news agency, published an article that said the United States wasusing the pandemic to impose its view of the world, according to American officials. InfoBrics.org published reports about Beijing’s contention that the coronavirus was originally an American biological weapon.
While the specific sites may not receive much traffic, American officials believe the disinformation written by Russian military intelligence is amplified, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly.
Tracking the influence of Russian disinformation is difficult. While documents stolen and published by Russian intelligence agencies had an important effect on the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, the social media posts do not seem to have been as consequential.
But propaganda and disinformation published on alternative news sites, like OneWorld or Global Research, may have more traction, some researchers believe.
“What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche media ecosystem,” said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.
The EU DisinfoLab, an independent nonprofit organization, has previously linked OneWorld, InfoRos and a French-language site to Russian propaganda efforts. Some of that disinformation centered on allied troops spreading the coronavirus, allegations similar to those in the new Mandiant report.
Mandiant called the threat group it found “Ghostwriter,” since it relied on false news articles or made-up letters and quotations that appeared to originate with local politicians or military officials. It relied on articles written by what it called “at least 14 inauthentic personas,” meaning reporters or blog writers who were invented by the creators of the influence campaign. The articles were published by pro-Russian sites like TheDuran.com, which American intelligence officials have also been examining.
In one example, a fabricated letter presented as being written by the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, perpetuated the false claim that the alliance was planning to leave Lithuania as the pandemic spread. Another episode involved a local Lithuanian news site that was hacked, and attackers posted an article that falsely claimed German troops had desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Kaunas, a city in central Lithuania.
Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes • Facebook
David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent. In a 36-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook