CopyCop is a newly created network of news websites that has repeatedly attracted the attention of the community through its pro-Russian and controversial publications written using artificial intelligence. Investigators Recorded Future already published a report in May, in which they noted that CopyCop published 19 thousand false texts in a month. In early March, this network of websites began publishing articles in English and French on a number of controversial issues. In particular, accusations against Israel of war crimes, emotional materials about the political debate in America on immigration and reparations for slavery, and also spread stories about alleged Polish mercenaries in Ukraine. What was new was that the articles were taken from legitimate news agencies and modified using artificial intelligence, most likely ChatGPT. Recorded Future believed that CopyCop may be connected to the Russian government.

A report from Insikt Group was subsequently published showing that CopyCop had shifted its focus to the 2024 US elections. Using artificial intelligence and inauthentic websites, CopyCop is mass-producing pro-Russian political content. For example, between May 10 and 12, 2024, the network registered 120 new websites with the purpose of promoting news related to the US elections, although the content of these websites received limited distribution on social media.

CopyCop has shifted its focus primarily to the 2024 US presidential election, distributing targeted content via YouTube videos aimed at discrediting political leaders in France, Ukraine, and the European Union (EU). The network of websites uses content from leading US, UK, and Russian state-run news outlets. Within 24 hours of the original articles being published, CopyCop extracts, modifies, and distributes them to US-based websites using over 1,000 fake journalists.

The network has adapted to recent scrutiny by moving its infrastructure to US-based hosts, which is likely to minimize evidence of ties to the Russian government. Additionally, fewer traces of generative AI indicate an attempt to hide the use of large language models (LLMs).

According to Insikt Group, AI-powered influence networks like CopyCop are likely to become more visible ahead of the 2024 US elections. There is a possibility that once these websites develop a stable algorithm for their actions, CopyCop will publish more pro-Russian content hidden among a large volume of other media, making it more difficult to identify and analyze. This is evidence that Russia is likely exploring the use of AI to expand its influence avenues in the information war against Ukraine and its partner countries. In particular, this concerns interference in the elections in the US, one of the main suppliers of military and financial aid to our country.

Ukraine continues to carry out air attacks on Russian territory, citing the destruction of infrastructure key to Moscow's military efforts and a response to Russia's strikes on Ukrainian territory. For example, on August 22, 2024, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russians had repelled a Ukrainian attack and intercepted 28 drones over six of their regions. The governor of the Volgograd region also spoke of a fire on the territory of a military facility. This turned out to be an attack by the Security Services of Ukraine on the Marinovka airfield. Earlier, the mayor of Moscow had also spoken of “one of the largest attacks” by drones on the Russian capital. Although the Ukrainian side did not comment specifically on the Moscow mayor's address, anonymous and pro-Russian Telegram channels began to claim that Ukraine would pay for its actions and would receive so-called “revenge shelling” in response.

Now, in the understanding of propagandists, “revenge shelling” is not a direct and not at all hostile attack on Ukraine, but only a way to pay for the fact that the Ukrainian side “decided” to attack Russian territory in the air and on land.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are intensifying the infrastructure war, which increases the risk of corresponding attacks on Ukrainian energy, gas and fuel infrastructure facilities. This will lead to the Ukrainian people becoming hostages of the situation. The black winter in Ukraine could become the largest catastrophe in the entire war”, this is how anonymous telegram users threatened Ukrainians.

In such reports, Ukraine is once again portrayed as the aggressor, and Russia as the victim, which is trying to defend itself. Moreover, if Ukraine can really resort to shelling military facilities in Russia, then Moscow is seething over everything and even calls it a “legitimate target”: this is how the Kremlin has long blurred the boundaries between civilian and military facilities, allowing itself to shell residential buildings, public institutions, kindergartens and schools.

For example, on August 26, 2024, Russia launched its most massive air strike on Ukraine. According to Forbes Ukraine, the cost of the attack is $1.2–1.3 billion. Russia attacked 15 Ukrainian regions, including the Kyiv hydroelectric power station. The station was hit and damaged as a result of the shelling, but there is no threat of a dam break. There are also reports of casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure in other regions.

In short, the occupiers are deliberately committing genocide against Ukrainians, killing them in their homes. At the same time, Moscow is trying to whitewash itself and deny any crimes, hiding it all under the term “revenge shelling”: supposedly the Kremlin is exclusively a victim. But documented cases of Russian terror show what the terrorist country Russia is really doing.

On the night of August 24, 2024, Russian troops launched a missile attack on the Sapphire Hotel in Kramatorsk. At the time, it was housing foreign and Ukrainian journalists. As a result of the enemy attack, four journalists were injured, one British media worker was killed. Later, a Reuters report revealed that the deceased was their security adviser, 38-year-old Briton Ryan Evans. Evans is a former British military man who began working with Reuters in 2022. Immediately after the information about the shelling was made public, Russian propaganda began to spread manipulations around the death of the British news agency employee, trying to justify this crime. This was warned by the Center for Countering Disinformation.

In their messages on Telegram channels, the Russians lie that Evans was allegedly an agent of the British intelligence service MI6, appealing to his military past. They also spread disinformation that all “military instructors from NATO member countries” arrive in Ukraine as journalists, and the attacked hotel was a “location of foreign mercenaries”. In fact, the deceased arrived in Ukraine as part of a team of foreign journalists as a civilian security adviser for reporters working in the combat zone. He has already advised Reuters journalists on security in Ukraine, Israel, and at the Paris Olympics.

By spreading such fakes, hostile propaganda is trying to hide its crimes against civilians and present the hotel primarily as a “military target”. With the goal of a targeted strike on “Sapfir” (Sapphire), the enemy is trying to intimidate foreign journalists who have come to Ukraine and are covering the truth about Russia's armed aggression against our country.

Propagandists are spreading information on social networks that massive missile strikes on the Rivne NPP have damaged all power units and significantly increased radiation levels. In particular, rumors are being spread that the radiation background in the area of the NPP allegedly exceeds permissible levels by many times. However, this is a fake.

This was noted by specialists from the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security. In particular, the photo of the fire, actively spreading on the Internet, was taken during a fire at a warehouse in Tashkent in 2023, and not at the Rivne NPP. This was confirmed by journalists from the Raion.Varash publication, who conducted their own investigation. In addition, National Atomic Power Generating Company Energoatom, the Ukrainian company responsible for nuclear energy, officially denied these rumors. They confirmed that no emergency situations occurred at the Rivne NPP, and all nuclear units are operating normally, without exceeding the radiation background.

The dissemination of such fakes serves to sow panic among the population, cause fear and destabilize the situation in Ukraine. Such fakes are used by the enemy to reduce the morale of Ukrainians, increase social tension and undermine trust in official sources of information.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariia Zakharova said that thousands of citizens from NATO countries are allegedly storming Russian diplomatic missions, trying to save their families and children from Western governments. She explains this as a consequence of the “liberal idea”, which allegedly erases the boundaries between good and evil, leading to the rejection of “traditional values” and causing a deep crisis in Western society. However, this statement is just another manifestation of Russian propaganda, which seeks to create the illusion that Russia is a defender of “true” values in the fight against the supposedly degraded West.

This was noted by specialists from the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security. They note that this rhetoric is one of the key elements of the ideology of Russia-ism, which is trying to present Russia as the last fortress of morality and justice in the world.

The facts show otherwise. There are very few cases of Western citizens moving to Russia, and most of them have a criminal or other questionable background. For example, Russian media actively spread the story of an “American from Boston” named Wilmer Puello-Mota, who allegedly moved to Russia and even participated in a so-called “special military operation”. Although Puello-Mota does exist, the propaganda conceals the fact that he fled to Russia due to criminal prosecution in the United States. He is suspected of possessing child pornography and other crimes, so his case is not an example of “fleeing liberalism”, but just another manipulation by Russian media.

The purpose of spreading such stories is to discredit the West and to support the idea that only in Russia can one find a real refuge from the “decay” and “immorality” that propaganda attributes to other countries. This is part of a broader strategy to increase anti-Western sentiment both in Russia and among its international allies.