The Moscow Times reports, citing Reuters, that the EU diplomatic service document refers to Operation Overload. According to the report’s authors, pro-Russian accounts spread fake videos disguised as Western media reports.
These materials claimed that migrants were raping protesters and that France was facing terrorist attacks. The report’s authors believe the campaign aimed to portray the French leadership as weak and authoritarian.
The riots swept Paris and other French cities in October and were among the largest in the country in recent years. Protests against rising living costs and deteriorating public services escalated into clashes with police. According to the French Interior Ministry, about 550,000 people took to the streets on October 17, 2,400 people were detained, around 1,000 police officers were injured, and one protester died after a heart attack.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on October 21 that the authorities had noticed information manipulation by foreign accounts. According to a report by the French Foreign Ministry, the ten most popular posts from October 16 to 18 about the riots from pro-Russian accounts on the social network X received 2.8 million views.
The same report says that messages from accounts linked to Donald Trump’s MAGA movement garnered more than 49 million views, while posts by Israeli officials and bloggers received over 35 million. These messages linked what was happening to migration and radical Islamism. According to the document, Operation Overload has been running since September 2023; the British think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue wrote that the network forges newspaper headlines and news stories, uses artificial intelligence to imitate experts’ voices, and spreads such posts during political events.
The network’s activities were investigated by the French agency Viginum, which combats foreign digital interference. Moscow rejects the accusations: in August, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called claims of Russian interference in the French election campaign fabrications used to manipulate public opinion.
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