If its name evokes that of a video game, the reality does not make you want to have fun at all. This Monday, February 12, the French service for combating foreign digital interference (Viginum) revealed the existence of a network of at least 193 Russian “information portals”, aimed at an international audience.
A set called “Portal Kombat” by the French organization, “in reference to [sa] offensive information strategy”, he specifies in its technical report. In Europe as in the United States, these sites “disseminate pro-Russian content” which legitimizes the war against Ukraine and highlights information likely to destabilize kyiv’s support.
Believing that “Portal Kombat” sites can act as “sleeper” cells“, capable of being activated at any time – and in particular during the numerous elections expected in 2024 – Paris and Berlin communicated with one voice this Monday. At the end of a meeting in the “Weimar” format, to which the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs was also invited, the French Minister Stéphane Séjourné announced, in a video published this Tuesday onthe launch of a “response system” to “unacceptable interference”.
Originally, the approximately 147 sites belonging to the “historical ecosystem” created since 2013 targeted “Russian and Ukrainian audiences”, with domain names including the names of localities in the two countries. For the most part, they contain “relatively unpoliticized, even harmless” content. Some of them have also been deactivated.
But the most recent sites, founded in June 2023, directly target several Western countries: France (with the domain name pravda-fr.com), Germany, Austria and Switzerland (pravda-de.com) , Poland (pravda-pl.com), Spain (pravda-es.com), the United Kingdom and the United States (pravda-en.com).
“Pravda Ecosystem”
All belong to the “Pravda ecosystem” – a Russian word meaning “truth” and referring to the former daily newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party. Viginum believes “with a high degree of confidence” that these groups “belong to the same digital infrastructure”, but the identity of the Russian service provider has not yet been revealed. This structured network is also referenced by Google – where it sometimes appears at the top of search results – and massively populated. According to Viginum, the Pravda system published more than 152,000 articles between June 23 and September 19.
What we know is that all of this content has in common that it is “very ideologically oriented [et] expose manifestly inaccurate or misleading narratives.” “Given its technical characteristics, the processes implemented as well as the objectives pursued, this network constitutes foreign digital interference”, we can read in the technical report.
On the French version, for example, we found this false information according to which French mercenaries were reportedly killed in Kharkiv during a Russian strike in January. Or, content titled “’Enough!’ : France calls for radical measures against Zelensky”.
The French version of Pravda headlines “radical measures against Zelensky”, comments made by Florian Philippot.
© / Screenshot
If these comments seem, with this title, to have been made by a member of the government, the reality is quite different. They were spoken by the president of the Patriots, Florian Philippot, who became a pro-Russian conspirator after his failure in the last legislative elections.
“Moderate” consequences
France, as an ally of kyiv, is particularly targeted by the network. This is evidenced, according to Viginum, by the content published on pravda-fr “denigrating the French presence in the Sahel or promoting increased cooperation between Russia and the African continent”. All with the aim of discrediting “political speech and the media”, underlines the organization behind the investigation.
However, “despite an elaborate system, the consequences in France remained moderate”, explains Viginum in the columns of Figaro. Indeed, given the number of articles published, pravda-fr’s audiences seem relatively low: the site recorded 10,700 visits in November 2023. This is much less than the Polish (17,600), German (34 400), English (36,700) and Spanish (55,000).