Russian operatives spread false information online that the Real IRA was recruiting Islamist militias as part of campaign to sow division in the West, according to a new report.
The deception operation, titled Secondary Infektion, took place over six years in seven different languages and on 300 different online platforms.
Graphika, a New York-based analytics company behind the report, uses artificial intelligence to study and observe online communities. It described Secondary Infektion as a “long-running Russian information operation”. It included a number of social media campaigns run by a central entity, which was already active in 2014 and still running early this year.
Secondary Infektion targeted countries across Europe and North America with fake stories and forged documents, the report said. Its focus and
