This week, in a striking display of reality denial, we saw pro-Kremlin sources push two conflicting narratives about North Korean troops in the Kursk region(opens in a new tab): pretending they don’t exist at allwhile simultaneously arguing their presence is only a Western fabrication to justify NATO’s involvement.

Tuesday, November 5 marked the end of the American presidential election cycle with Republican candidate Donald J. Trump wins the election(opens in a new tab). As we reported BeforeRussian state-controlled media and other pro-Kremlin disinformation actors attempted to interfere with the election using multi-pronged influence attempts – a pro-Kremlin tactic we know all too well.

Reject reality and replace it with your own

The Kremlin’s mental gymnastics toward North Korea is a response to growing evidence from multiple intelligence services confirming that the DPRK has sent approximately 10 to 12,000 troops to support Russia’s war effort.

The deployment has been independently verified by Ukrainian intelligence (opens in a new tab)THE European Intelligence Center (INTCEN)(opens in a new tab)THE US Department of Defense (opens in a new tab)And National Intelligence Service of South Korea (opens in a new tab)with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirms(opens in a new tab) earlier, some North Korean forces have already moved closer to Ukraine’s borders.

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Have cake and eat it too

What makes this disinformation effort particularly remarkable is how it reveals the Kremlin propaganda machine that is trying to have it both ways.

On one hand, pro-Kremlin sources dismiss reports of North Korean troops as CIA manipulation and say foreign troops would only hamper Russia’s “perfectly coordinated fighting machine.” . On the other hand, they simultaneously propagate a narrative that Western statements about North Korean support are merely attempts to retroactively justify the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine – although there is no no NATO troops on the front line.

This contradiction highlights a key aspect of Russian information warfare: when reality becomes impossible to deny, they often resort to multiple conflicting narratives, hoping that at least one of them will stick to their target audience.

Of course, it also seems a little strange when “the greatest army in the world”, as the pro-Kremlin media likes to hyperbolize the Russian military, has to beg for help from an international pariah and one of the poorest nations (opens in a new tab) on the planet. Therefore, Moscow also used an inverted reality to explain this conundrum by simply stating that Russia helps the DPRK(opens in a new tab)and not the other way around.

Caught with your hands in the cookie jar

Russian state-controlled and other pro-Kremlin media outlets have deployed multi-pronged influence attempts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election through Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) activities.

According to official US sources, these attempts involved, for example, fabricated videos falsely depicting election fraud(opens in a new tab), bomb threats (opens in a new tab) which temporarily disrupted voting at twelve Georgia polling places in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, and a “Doppelganger” campaign (opens in a new tab) which created sophisticated clone websites masquerading as legitimate American media outlets.

This sounds too familiar

The tactics included, among other things, AI-generated content, coordinated inauthentic social media accounts, and multi-step URL redirects to bypass platform restrictions. Russian influence actors also exploited American domestic problems like Hurricane Helene sowing division, saying aid to Ukraine trumped hurricane relief efforts. These attempts relied heavily on “flooding” tactics to advance particular narratives, including deep state conspiracy theoriesin the information space while attempting to erode public trust in American democratic institutions and candidates.

Russian interference in the 2024 US presidential election follows a trend seen earlier in the European Parliament electionsand vote Moldova And Georgia. Similar tactics were used in these elections: defaming candidates, flooding the information space with lies, exploiting existing societal divisions, orchestrating coordinated and inauthentic behavior on social media, and attempting to erode trust in democratic institutions.

New cases of pro-Kremlin disinformation have us shaking our heads this week:

• In a bizarre and twisted pro-Kremlin fantasy, a Russian military priest wildly declared that Ukrainian “neo-Nazi and pagan battalions” carry out human sacrifices in the Kursk region. This unusual disinformation narrative, emerging amid Ukraine’s advance into the Kursk region in August 2024, attempts, once againto present the Russian invasion as a kind of holy war against “ungodly” Ukraine. The reality is striking: Washington Post journalists who visited the town of Sudzha(opens in a new tab) found no evidence of misconduct by the Ukrainian military against civilians. Meanwhile, there is substantial documented evidence of Real-Life Russian War Crimes (opens in a new tab)including targeting civilian infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and churches – with the March 2022 decree. airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol(opens in a new tab) constitutes one of the most notorious examples with the Bucha Massacre(opens in a new tab). This latest attempt to portray the Ukrainian armed forces as “evil pagans” is just another variation of the Kremlin’s strategy. obsessive narrative of “Nazi Ukraine”which she has championed since 2014. By combining religious scaremongering with false accusations of atrocities, such disinformation attempts to both demonize Ukraine and distract from Russia’s documented war crimes.
• The Kremlin propaganda machine in production yet another absurd allegation about Poland. This time, a well-known pro-Kremlin mouthpiece, Pravda-pl, claimed that Poland is ‘on the verge of war with Russia’ groundlessly transforming Poland’s discussions of missile defense capabilities into predictions of imminent full-scale war. This disinformation narrative surfaced after Poland and Ukraine signed a security agreement in July 2024 that allows Polish air defense to intercept Russian missiles heading towards Polish territory(opens in a new tab). Although Poland has indeed stepped up its support for Ukraine, including providing MiG-29s, it is far from going to war. This disinformation narrative fits into the broader pattern of Russian politics. portray Poland and other NATO allies as aggressorswhile conveniently ignoring that it was Russia that launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This manipulation of information also aims to present legitimate defensive cooperation between democratic neighbors as a hawkish act, while attempting to intimidate Poland and other allies from supporting Ukraine.
• Another “classic” from the Kremlin’s anti-EU playbook claims that an “uncontrolled elite class” in Brussels deprives member states of their sovereignty while imposing “cultural and Marxist values”. This recurring conspiratorial disinformation attempts to portray the EU as an anti-democratic monster run by shadowy elites. The reality of EU governance is much more mundane and democratic: citizens directly elect their representatives to the European Parliament, while the European Council is made up of democratically elected national leaders. The European Commission itself is subject to several layers of democratic control, and the principle of subsidiarity (opens in a new tab) ensures that decisions are made as close to citizens as possible. This pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative is part of a long-standing Kremlin strategy to portray the EU as undemocratic – a truly ironic claim coming from a source that constantly works to undermine democratic processes both at home and abroad. By pushing emotional triggers like ‘uncontrollable elite” and create false tensions between the European institutions and national sovereigntythis attempt at disinformation aims to sow distrust and encourage political fragmentation within the European Union.