Russia’s Doppelgänger network did not need to invent hundreds of foreign spokespeople. It borrowed them. An archive from one of the operation’s propaganda websites shows how interviews with politicians, former military and intelligence officials, academics and civic figures were repackaged to make Kremlin-friendly arguments look like independent international opinion.
The archive contained more than 500 interviews involving people from over 50 countries. Those conversations were used in roughly 1,800 publications, an investigation published on 12 November 2026 found. Many of the interviewees apparently did not know that their comments would be reused in a Russian information operation.
The scale matters, but the method matters more. A quotation can retain the authority of the person who said it while being detached from the question, context and intention that originally gave it meaning.
Reputation as borrowed credibility
The investigation was based on an archive obtained after the 2024 hacking of Recent Reliable News, or RRN, described as a key resource in the Doppelgänger network. Interviewees included figures from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Bulgaria and other countries.
The presence of someone’s words in a later article does not show that they endorsed its message. A former officer may have discussed security without supporting an argument against military assistance to Ukraine. A politician may have answered a question about economic pressure without calling for sanctions against Russia to be lifted. An academic may have offered a qualified view that was later placed beside a much more decisive political conclusion.
That distinction is central to the network’s apparent method. The original exchange supplies a real person and a real quotation. The publication supplies a new headline, surrounding claims and a platform designed to look like journalism. Together, they can create the impression that a pro-Russian position is the considered judgement of an independent foreign authority.
Western government bodies and research organisations have linked Doppelgänger to the Russian company Agency for Social Design, which they associate with work in the interests of the Russian presidential administration. That assessment concerns the network’s infrastructure. It does not establish that the people whose comments appeared in its output knowingly participated in the campaign.
The recurring political messages are familiar: military support for Ukraine is portrayed as damaging to European countries; sanctions are described as self-defeating; and economic and social problems are blamed on Kyiv, Brussels or governments backing Ukraine rather than on Moscow’s responsibility for the war.
A publication can be part of the deception
Interviews are only one element of the operation. Doppelgänger also creates websites that imitate established media outlets and public institutions. Their names, design and editorial style are intended to make manufactured material appear familiar before a reader has considered whether the claims are true.
That creates two separate problems. Readers may be misled by the content itself, but they may also be unable to identify the apparent publisher. A fabricated outlet gives a reshaped quotation a setting that looks legitimate.
RRN’s history illustrates how difficult it is to deal with that system by closing individual websites. After the 2024 breach, the site moved to a Turkish domain and began operating under the name Researchers & Reporters Network. The visible brand changed, but the broader model remained available: register a new address, alter the presentation and circulate material through social media and connected accounts.
The original investigation is available through United24Media.
Imitation has a wider cost than the spread of any single false claim. If propaganda repeatedly adopts the appearance of professional reporting, readers may begin to assume that all sources are equally compromised. That kind of blanket distrust weakens genuine journalism and makes it harder to distinguish a questionable publication from a reliable one.
The network’s continued ability to operate under a new name also shows why takedowns can be temporary victories. Removing a domain may interrupt distribution, but it does not necessarily remove the people, accounts, material or publishing routines that can be assembled behind its replacement.
From household pressure to a foreign-policy conclusion
Doppelgänger’s messages gain traction by attaching themselves to concerns that already exist in European politics. Energy and fuel prices, wages, pensions and hospital funding are immediate issues for voters. The manipulation lies not in claiming that those pressures are real, but in presenting one contested explanation as obvious: support for Ukraine is said to be the cause.
Complex domestic problems are reduced to a single foreign-policy choice. Aid to Ukraine becomes wasteful, sanctions become a punishment imposed on European citizens and renewed relations with Moscow are presented as the practical alternative. The same structure can be adapted to different countries while retaining the same direction of travel.
According to Alliance4Europe, accounts linked to Doppelgänger used the social context of protests in France during autumn 2026 to promote anti-Ukrainian and Eurosceptic narratives. The assessment does not indicate that the network created those protests. Rather, it illustrates how an existing dispute can become an entry point for a wider message about Ukraine and the European Union.
This approach allows an international campaign to look locally rooted. A complaint about living costs can be turned into an argument against sanctions. Frustration with a national government can be redirected towards military assistance for Kyiv. Criticism of European institutions can be recast as proof that solidarity with Ukraine has failed.
When such material is repeated in domestic political debates, quotations from current and former European politicians, military figures and officials can give demands for an end to sanctions, a halt to military aid or a rapprochement with Russia an appearance of mainstream support. The objective need not be to persuade an entire electorate.
It may be enough to make marginal claims seem familiar, intensify existing divisions and strengthen political forces already opposed to continued support for Ukraine. Multilingual publishing allows the same basic argument to move across borders while local grievances provide its vocabulary.
The people behind the quotations
The archive reveals more about the mechanics of the campaign than about the private beliefs of every person interviewed. A speaker can be broadly critical of a government, concerned about economic hardship or sceptical of a particular policy without knowingly endorsing the wider narrative into which their words are inserted.
That is what makes the tactic difficult to read at a glance. The material may contain a genuine interview, a recognisable name and a real domestic controversy. The distortion appears in the combination: the selected quotation, the surrounding claims, the copied media identity and the political conclusion drawn for the reader.
Doppelgänger therefore operates through a chain of substitutions. A foreign voice stands in for independent validation. A counterfeit publication stands in for a trusted newsroom. A local grievance stands in for evidence that European support for Ukraine is the source of wider hardship.
RRN’s move to a new domain and identity leaves the practical question unresolved. Blocking one outlet can close a window, but the network’s method is designed to open another before audiences have learned to recognise the room behind it.
