Elbakyan, Russia Redux
A Russian voice reappears just when Russian election and societal interference seems to be spiking
In what seems like a throwback for this Thursday, a translated call for access to information from Alexandra Elbakyan has been circulating and given far too much credence by people who have fallen for her siren calls before, only to find that she was a front for Russian hackers.
The timing of this “declaration” — the grandiosity coming from this marginal scientist and front for Russian hacking is not to be overlooked — is striking, as this week the US Departments of Justice, State, and the Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and two entities, and criminal charges against two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who allegedly funded a company in the US to hire right-wing social media influencers to push Russian propaganda before the 2024 election.
The Department of Justice also seized 32 internet domains that “the Russian government and Russian sponsored actors” have used to influence the 2024 election. In a malign influence campaign called “Doppelganger,” these domains produced fake articles that appeared to be from major U.S. news sites, to which influencers and fake social media profiles on Facebook, X, Truth Social, and YouTube then drove traffic.
This harkens back to 2022, when the US Department of Justice seized the domains of Z-Library, and announced that two Russian nationals associated with it were arrested in Argentina.