The head of the US Senate Committee on International Relations, Ben Cardin, received a call from a man posing as the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba. He behaved "atypically" and raised questions about the authorization of long-range strikes on the Russian Federation.
Points of attention
- The incident with the deepfake of Dmytro Kuleba and the US senator is an indicator of an attempt at disinformation and interference in political processes.
- Russian trolls have changed tactics, spreading fake videos to discredit political figures, including Kamala Harris.
- Disinformation through fictional videos is becoming an increasingly effective tool for influencing public opinion.
What did the fake Dmytro Kuleba talk about with the US senator
As the publication notes, with reference to a letter from the Senate security service and two anonymous officials, Ben Cardin received an email from "Dmytro Kuleba" with a request to conduct a Zoom call.
During the conversation, the person looked and spoke like a Ukrainian minister, but the senator was alerted by questions that had a political basis, in particular, related to the upcoming elections.
Inquiries about his attitude to possible long-range strikes on the territory of Russia became especially suspicious. After that, Cardin ended the conversation and reported the incident to the State Department.
Cardin was not named in the letter from Senate security, but two Senate officials confirmed that it was Cardin.
Cardin himself later partially acknowledged this incident, noting that the attacker tried to contact him fraudulently, pretending to be a well-known person. However, he did not specify whether it was about Kuleba or Ukraine.
Russian bots are spreading fake videos to discredit Kamala Harris
As noted in a report by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC), over the past few months, Russia has changed its tactics to influence the political situation in the United States, focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign by distributing disinformation videos.
Two groups of trolls are mentioned, Storm-1516 and the new Storm-1679, who created and distributed two videos about Harris that have received millions of views.
The first video is about an alleged attack by Harris supporters on a participant in a rally in support of Donald Trump. In the second video, the actress, who looks like Harris, is shown running from the scene of the accident.
These videos are distributed under the name of a fictitious local San Francisco media outlet created a few days before they were published.
A new troll group, Storm-1679, has shifted its focus from content about the Paris Olympics to spreading fake videos discrediting Harris. One such video, which contained false claims, garnered more than 100,000 views on Telegram within hours.
