Lies about war refugees and fakes in 6 languages: journalists analyze Kremlin’s propaganda agency

Journalists from the Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, in collaboration with several European editorial teams, have analyzed thousands of leaked internal documents from the Social Design Agency (SDA). This organization, sanctioned by both the EU and the US, operates under the orders of the Russian president’s administration.

The Social Design Agency (SDA), managed by Russian political strategist Ilya Gambashidze, employs propagandists who disseminate disinformation aimed at discrediting Ukraine, its leaders, citizens, and Western supporters, while simultaneously promoting Russian interests and European politicians who defend these interests. 

Ilya Gambashidze’s team at the Social Design Agency operates in three primary areas: monitoring, analytics, and creative work. The monitoring team, which includes 24 members, analyzes content from over 1,000 opinion leaders across six languages daily, generating reports that identify potential informational triggers. The analytics division focuses on studying target audiences and developing talking points for dissemination. Meanwhile, the creative department is responsible for crafting articles in various journalistic styles and creating caricatures.

A separate aspect of their work involves fabricating stories about Ukrainians for European audiences. “One such story, supposedly authored by the German publication Bild, claimed that Ukrainian refugees, while trying to burn a Russian flag, accidentally set fire to the home of the Germans who sheltered them,” reports the Schemes.

Among the Kremlin agency’s other “successes” are a meme featuring an image of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which billionaire Elon Musk later shared on the X platform, and false claims about the alleged trafficking of Ukrainian children on the darknet.

US authorities directly accuse the SDA of working for the Kremlin, with Sergey Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the Russian presidential administration under Vladimir Putin, named as overseeing their operations.

For more details, refer to the full investigation report.