The U.S. Treasury Department this week slapped sanctions on two men and their Russia-based media companies after accusing them of being part of a disinformation scheme to mimic legitimate news websites to push Kremlin propaganda.
The U.S. government targeted Ilya Gambashidze, founder of the Moscow-based company Social Design Agency, and Nikolai Tupikin, the CEO of Group Structura LLC. The Treasury Department said the companies provided the Russian government with a “variety of services,” including creating more than 60 websites designed to appear to be government organizations and legitimate media operations in Europe.
“The fake websites appeared to have been built to carefully mimic the appearance of legitimate news websites,” Treasury Department officials said in a statement. “The fake websites included embedded images and working links to legitimate sites and even used the impersonated site’s cookie acceptance page.”
Officials said they also created misleading social media accounts to amplify the spoofed websites’ content.
The U.S. and Western nations say the Kremlin routinely uses disinformation and media manipulation as part of its arsenal of weapons in its campaign against Ukraine, including fake generated stories on Crimea, the role of “neo-Nazis” in the Ukrainian government and an alleged string of U.S.-Ukrainian bioweapons laboratories in the country.
“The Russian government and aligned actors use disinformation as a weapon and to distract, confuse and subvert opponents,” according to a statement from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “The spread of disinformation around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects wider challenges related to the shift in how information is produced and distributed.”
As a result of the sanctions, all U.S.-based property belonging to the two men and their companies are blocked and must be reported to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Anyone in the United States engaging in business transactions with Mr. Gambashidze and Mr. Tupikin or their companies could also face sanctions or other liabilities, officials said.