Pauline Maufrais works on Ukraine at the international organisation Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF). In an interview with The Ukrainian Week, she explains how Russia builds networks of influence abroad and how it uses some Western bloggers as part of that effort.
— A recent Reporters Without Borders report examines how Moscow deploys fake media outlets and so-called journalists to wage information warfare. Is this a new form of propaganda, and does it have a real impact on Western audiences?
— At RSF, we track Russian propaganda to understand how it works and the strategies it employs in different countries. Our investigations are compiled in the report Propaganda Monitor: The Russian Edition, published in September 2025. It looks at the activities of various Kremlin-linked actors — those spreading or funding disinformation. What’s important to note is that the Kremlin adapts its strategies depending on the region. For instance, the narratives it pushes to audiences in Western Europe are very different from those aimed at people in West Africa or Latin America.
We also keep a close eye on the situation in Ukraine and how Russian propaganda tries to push its narratives abroad to justify the full-scale invasion. Moscow is targeting audiences around the world — in Italy, France, the Netherlands, the US and Canada.
We also look at the impact of the invasion on the occupied territories, which the Kremlin has used since 2014 as testing grounds for disinformation and to build its own propaganda networks. In some cases, Russia even co-opted local Ukrainian media, using well-known brands as channels for its messaging.
— So how exactly does Russia operate in the West?
— It often works through people in Western countries — bloggers and others who present themselves as independent voices in the information space — publishing content in multiple languages. But the information they share is unreliable. Many of these individuals have visited Ukraine’s occupied territories since 2014 and completely ignore the crimes committed there, helping to legitimise Russia’s narrative on the occupation. The aim is to reach audiences outside Russia: French actors speak to francophone audiences, British ones to English speakers, and so on. The content is tailored to each audience, and this work is very often funded by the Kremlin.
— Can you give some examples?
— One case I looked at closely is a multilingual website called International Reporters. It’s a Russian site with an English name, which makes it easy to mislead an uninformed audience, since it’s not obvious who is really behind it. The site brings together contributors from Russia, France, Italy and the Netherlands who, since 2014, have been involved in disinformation networks. Many have worked in the occupied Donbas, accompanied the Russian army during the full-scale invasion in 2022, and consistently presented Russia’s actions in a positive light.
Our investigation revealed that the website is funded by an organisation called Dialog, a Russian group headed by Vladimir Tabak, a Kremlin-linked figure and former employee of the Russian presidential administration. The organisation is currently under European Union sanctions.
International Reporters targets audiences across several countries and is far from independent. Funded by Kremlin-connected networks, it portrays the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as justified while completely ignoring the many war crimes committed by Russia. This is just one example of the type of investigations we conduct.
— How far do these manipulative websites reach, and are they influencing European — especially French — public opinion on the war in Ukraine?
— When we looked into this in early 2025, their impact was still relatively limited. They were very active on social media — X (formerly Twitter), Telegram, Facebook, and VKontakte in Russia — but their overall audience was fairly limited, numbering just tens of thousands of followers. That said, even if the audience isn’t huge, each contributor has their own following and is highly visible within Russian disinformation networks abroad.
— Have you been able to identify any French nationals working for this fake media outlet?
— Yes. Its contributors are public figures, and one of the most prominent is Christelle Néant. She has been spreading Russian disinformation for a decade and lives in the occupied Donbas. Néant is a co-founder of the site, and in 2023 she met with Vladimir Putin to present the International Reporters project, which he publicly supported. Other French and Italian contributors work for the site from Russia, and some have even acquired Russian citizenship.
These profiles are often very similar — people who have also reported on events in Syria with a pro-Assad slant, denying war crimes committed by Assad against his own population or by Russia against Syrians. They recycle familiar Kremlin narratives, including themes like the “decline of the West,” and so on.
— Do the Russians have a similar network of influence within civil society, using neutral groups “in the dark” without them knowing the true purpose of these fake media outlets?
— The Kremlin uses journalistic tools to push its version of events. In 2025, Russia launched its own fact-checking network, the Global Fact Checking Network, presenting it as a response to respected independent organisations like the International Fact Checking Network. But the Global Fact Checking Network is far from independent — it’s backed by Russia’s foreign ministry and its embassies abroad. Among independent fact-checkers, there’s no doubt about what this network really is, and it’s important that the wider public understands this too.
If you look closely at their publications, it’s clear they distort figures, strip them of context, and consistently publish content that serves Russia’s interests. There’s no scrutiny of Russia’s own actions; instead, they focus almost exclusively on other countries, including Ukraine, Romania, and France.
For example, there was an article that claimed to show, quite convincingly, that Ukrainian refugees were being rejected across the European Union. In reality, the piece completely distorted the figures, taking them out of context. We asked the authors about the source of their numbers. After exchanging emails with us, they did change the text — but made no note of it and left the figures without proper context. Independent journalism has clear ethical standards, and that includes acknowledging mistakes and making corrections in a way that readers can see.
It’s also important to highlight the work of Ukrainian organisations with a deep understanding of Russian disinformation. Groups like Detector Media and StopFake have been tracking Russian propaganda for years and analysing it for international audiences.
— Fact-checking takes time, and by the time corrections appear, many people may have already absorbed false information. How can the public and society be protected from the wave of disinformation coming from Russia and elsewhere?
— It’s a serious challenge. I think the answer lies in media literacy and supporting independent, reliable media.
In 2019, RSF launched the Journalism Trust Initiative, which lets media outlets assess how transparently they operate. They can then undergo an audit in their own country and receive certification. In Ukraine, many outlets are in the process of certification, and several, including Detector Media, have already completed it. A whitelist of verified Ukrainian media is another way to strengthen the national media landscape.
