Connexion
Former Florida cop turned Kremlin operative, spreading Russian propaganda through over 200 fake news websites
The Russian troll farm, notorious for its 2024 video depicting Kamala Harris as a “rhino poacher,” has reemerged. This time, it has deployed over 200 new websites posing as local media outlets in the US, France, Canada, Norway, and even “fact-checking organizations” publishing in Ukrainian, Turkish, and Swahili languages, The Register reports.
Russia has a long history of launching disinformation campaigns to manipulate international and domestic perceptions. In 2022, it initiated the Doppelganger campaign aimed at undermining Western support for Ukraine. Its key messages are that:
- Western sanctions on Russia are ineffective
- The Ukrainian military is barbaric and neo-Nazi
- Ukrainian refugees burden European countries
- There is widespread Russophobia in the West.
According to Insikt Group (Recorded Future), the campaign is run by the CopyCop (Storm-1516) network, which uses uncontrolled AI models such as Llama 3 to mass-produce fabricated news, deepfakes, and political disinformation.
The Kremlin’s link: Ex-Florida cop and Russia’s military intelligence agency, or GRU
Investigators say the operation is likely coordinated by John Mark Dougan, a former Florida sheriff’s deputy who received political asylum in Moscow in 2016.
His fake media outlets have already been cited thousands of times on social media and even in news coverage. Insikt Group reports that the GRU funds LLM servers for the troll factory, using them to rewrite legitimate media articles and launch disinformation campaigns against the US, Ukraine, France, and others.
Disinformation disguised as “local news”
CopyCop sites impersonate American news portals while twisting global narratives to discredit Ukraine and the West. In March 2025, for instance, clearstory[.]news spread a false claim that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “embezzling US taxpayer funds,” based on a forged document from the Presidential Office in Kyiv.
Election Interference at Scale
Matt Mooney, Director of Global Issues at Insikt Group, said CopyCop’s expanding infrastructure shows a clear Kremlin intent to interfere in elections not just in the US but also across Europe. In January, the network launched 94 sites to meddle in Germany’s federal elections. This year, the number of such outlets has surged past 300.
Pressure on the US and Canada
New sites have also surfaced in Canada, including albertaseparatist[.]com and torontojournal[.]ca, exploiting separatist sentiments in Alberta to divide public opinion.
Meanwhile, the US is facing a political storm, as some senators demand answers from the Director of National Intelligence on whether information about foreign interference in elections has been deliberately withheld.
