Disinformation targeting Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is surging as US President Donald Trump's shift on the war frays relations with Kyiv and threatens to cripple support for the battle-worn nation.
Deepfakes, specious videos of Ukrainian soldiers and false narratives about Zelenskyy buying luxury properties – some of which have circulated for years – have resurfaced online, inflaming anti-Ukraine sentiment three years into Russia's invasion.
AFP has also debunked fresh lies, including false claims that Zelenskyy banned Trump's Truth Social platform in Ukraine.
Researchers say much of the disinformation spreading among US citizens was previously seeded by Russia, with some of the influence campaigns that sought to affect US elections increasingly focused on the Ukrainian president.
"We have observed a notable resurgence in anti-Ukraine disinformation narratives across US social media, many of which appear to be repurposed content from prior Russian influence campaigns," said McKenzie Sadeghi, an analyst with the misinformation watchdog NewsGuard.
The claims intensified following Trump's attacks on Zelenskyy, whom he called a "dictator."
"Trump's comments seem to have sparked renewed interest in anti-Ukraine narratives that had faded," Sadeghi told AFP.
The president's son Donald Trump Jr and conservative influencer Kyle Becker promoted a long-debunked deepfake of Zelenskyy dancing.
Another Trump ally, Republican Senator Mike Lee, amplified dubious footage that purported to show Ukrainian soldiers setting fire to a Trump effigy, while other prominent X accounts shared a clip supposedly depicting the country's troops burning copies of Trump's The Art of the Deal.
Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation called both clips "fake," saying they were staged and by "Russian propagandists."
Russian influence campaign
The videos appear to be the work of a Russian disinformation operation dubbed “Storm-1516,” said Clemson University's Darren Linvill, whose team uncovered the network in 2023.
The campaign previously targeted the US election with staged videos intelligence officials attributed to the Russians, including some claiming to show voter fraud.
As with some other Storm-1516 fakes, the two clips feature Ukrainian military insignia prominently but do not reveal "even a flash of an actual person's face, even a hint of an indication of where these things are filmed," Linvill said.
Both were disseminated last year by accounts Linvill said frequently launder Storm-1516 videos.
"Storm-1516 narratives have a lot of consistencies. It's how they're crafted, the narrative they're telling, how they're distributed."
Fake yachts
The Storm-1516 operation has also maligned Zelenskyy and his wife with tales of lavish purchases as Ukraine relies on Western military assistance.
"These false narratives show up in the top searches around Zelenskyy each month," Linvill said. "The number of villas this guy has bought at this point, according to Storm-1516, is outrageous."
The claims spiked again after Trump questioned Zelenskyy's legitimacy.
Between February 18 and 24, NewsGuard counted nearly 28,000 social media posts and articles that mentioned Zelenskyy and either a villa, yacht, winery or mansion – more than 26 times the mentions over the previous six-day period, Sadeghi said.
The group reported that a US-turned-Kremlin propagandist who runs hundreds of phony websites has helped spin 14 narratives accusing the Zelenskyys of corruption since the war began.
Joseph Bodnar, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the Russian influence efforts are focused "on fostering animosity between the Trump and Zelenskyy administrations."
"Russia wants to convince US negotiators that Ukraine is their enemy, not their partner. It's a means for the Kremlin to extract favorable terms in whatever peace settlement comes."
Some suspected Russian disinformation has reached Elon Musk.
In early February, the billionaire tasked by Trump with slashing government expenditure shared a made-up report saying the US paid celebrities to visit Zelenskyy in Ukraine.
It is the pay-off of what Linvill said has been years of Russian disinformation about Ukraine.
"The fruits of this constant pressure campaign are being born."
by Bill McCarthy, AFP
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