Nearly 80 disinformation operations were carried out between the end of August 2023 and early March 2025 by “Russian actors” mainly targeting the Ukrainian government and the countries supporting Ukraine, including France, determined the French authorities.
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Viginum, the French body to combat foreign digital interference, screened this disinformation campaign known as “Storm-1516”.
“The European public debate is pilaged by disinformation campaigns, led by Russian actors and relayed in particular by the US far right,” French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot reacted on Tuesday in a statement to AFP.
“The operating mode Storm-1516, which we have updated, has targeted the 2024 anticipated legislative elections” in France, “he added, urging the platforms which are” aware “to” act “.
“Everyone must be vigilant about these foreign digital interference,” he also stressed.
The operating mode is “particularly complex, adaptable and effective in disseminating anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narratives with Western audiences”, underlines Viginum whose report will be published on Wednesday morning.
-The organization believing that this campaign represents an “important threat to the digital public debate, both in France and in all European countries”.
“The Kremlin continues its information war with regard to us,” said a diplomatic source. Storm-1516 “constitutes a new proof of bad faith” of Moscow and its “unplaged to stop the escalation”.
The peculiarity of Storm-1516 is to use artificial intelligence to stage individuals with an open face and the use of amateur actors against remuneration.
Viginum also evokes the role of pro-maga American influencers or prorussian influencers such as French Adrien Bocquet, “former French soldier exiled in Russia” to amplify the dissemination of false information.
Finally, “particular care” is granted to the “money laundering” of content via media, especially African.
The main target of Storm-1516 is the Ukrainian government, “probably in the hope of leading to the suspension of Western aid” in Kyïv, note the authors of the Viginum report.
Some of the false information mentioned, such as the alleged acquisition by the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of a former Nazi building in Bavaria or a luxury hotel in Courchevel, have been verified in recent months by the AFP digital investigation service, in articles available on the factual AFP site (factual.afp.com).
The Western allies of Ukraine, and in particular France, are also in the viewfinder, notes Viginum, as a recent Newsguard report had shown. The organization of combating disinformation had thus already attributed to Storm-1516 a video supposed to show a Chadian migrant admitting to having violated a young girl of 12 years in France or another, generated by IA, accusing Brigitte Macron of sexual assault.
