A Russian Influence Campaign Is Exploiting College Campus Protests

Over the past week, a disinformation campaign operated by the Kremlin-aligned network Doppelganger amassed over 130,000 views on X, according to data shared exclusively with WIRED by Antibot4Navalny, a collective of anonymous Russian researchers who have spent years tracking the Russian influence operation.

Doppelganger is well known for using a network of inauthentic bot accounts to spread links to fake versions of real news websites. In the past, the network has impersonated websites as diverse as Le Monde in France and Fox News in the US. In recent months, the Doppelganger network has been used to stoke tensions in the US over the border crisis in Texas and boost false claims that celebrities like Taylor Swift were supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.