Extending the Fear
A wave of alarming stories circulated in the weeks leading up to the Paris Olympic Games, weaving together terrorism scares, a supposed mass poisoning, and fears of a Covid resurgence. These rumors traveled fast, aiming to destabilize the event and cast doubt on its security and success.
French intelligence traced the origin of these hoaxes to accounts across multiple social networks, connected to Russia through shared security information among European agencies. The effort appeared to be a coordinated campaign with the Games and the Olympic body as the stated targets.
What stood out was the rapid spread of thirteen videos containing falsehoods. To lend legitimacy, the creators hijacked logos from real media outlets such as TF1, Euronews, BBC, and France 24, as well as from intelligence agencies like the CIA. In many instances, a Telegram account was the primary broadcaster. The origin account is named Belshkvarka, which investigators have since emptied and rebranded as a bot.
Widening the Web of Fear
Numerous other accounts on TikTok, Telegram, and X became active in the days before the opening ceremony, forming what researchers call a Russian infosphere designed to spread disinformation and agitation. The messages were produced in Russian, French, and English to reach diverse audiences.
On July 16, ten days before the Games, one of the earliest narratives appeared. Posing as France24, a public news channel, Belshkvarka pushed Telegram channels to imply that the French intelligence service compelled YouTube to remove travel blog videos showing Paris airports and stations. The claim suggested these images would help terrorists plan attacks. A false video circulated on July 18, impersonating Euronews and alleging that President Emmanuel Macron would be replaced by a double at the opening ceremony due to security fears after attacks against a prominent political figure. This pattern continued the next day with another fake video attributed to Deutsche Welle, claiming that President Joe Biden would not attend Paris because of his physical and mental health.
Other narratives followed, such as claims that the Ganges was less polluted than the Seine, and a highly active Telegram channel named Thehandofthekremlin amplified these stories. Later, Russian propaganda channels circulated a forged AI-generated caricature of Macron swimming in the Seine amid filth. These pieces were designed to sow chaos and distrust around the Olympic event.
Virus and Terrorists
The dominant aim of these agitation narratives was to induce a sense of insecurity, amplify any reports of police action, risk, or threat, or fabricate them outright. A week before the opening, a video supposedly showing the CIA emblem swiped to claim an elevated attack risk circulated, and the same approach duped audiences into believing that leaders from several nations would boycott Paris due to security concerns.
Other videos claimed that heads of state from Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates would skip Paris because of fear of attacks, again using logos stolen from real outlets such as Euronews to add credibility. The style of public broadcasting was cloned to describe events on July 20, alleging that Paris faced a spike in Covid cases. Some clips argued the real danger lay in a viral agent, while other stories warned of quarantine actions against foreign delegations in the news cycle that day.
One fake France24 report on July 16 claimed terrorists could obtain weapons online with ease, a tale repeated across multiple channels and accumulating hundreds of thousands of views. The origin point was traced to a single X account with minimal following, highlighting how a single seed can seed broad misinformation.
Similar schemes asserted that the president of the International Olympic Committee ordered a journalist barred for corruption, a narrative designed to undermine trust in the Games and their oversight bodies.
Undermining and Degrading
Researchers describe these efforts as a Russian interference and manipulation campaign, not merely aimed at polarizing public opinion but at degrading the reputation of the French government and the Olympic movement. A public Microsoft analyst report from June highlighted a long-standing tactic by modern Russia to undermine major events when participation or victory is blocked, choosing instead to smear and depress the perception of the competition among participants, spectators, and global audiences. The operation appears to revolve around two disinformation units named Storm-1679 and Storm-1099.
There is a sense that Moscow’s stance toward Paris is critical. On July 28, Dmitry Medvedev criticized the opening ceremony in strong terms on social media, and conservative factions on the same platform echoed anti Paris messages. The Kremlin-aligned discourse fed a broader narrative that framed the Games as a moral battleground. A prominent Kremlin-aligned political analyst suggested that France had aligned against Russia, presenting a world view sympathetic to Russian messaging.
In the days that followed, a parody of the Last Supper circulated in a way that inflamed conservative circles and was weaponized by Kremlin-backed propaganda. A widely circulated voice from a Russian-speaking pro-Kremlin analyst claimed that France stood against the world in a struggle with Russia, reinforcing the narrative that Western governance faced a moral test. Parallel posts spread across Spanish-language networks portraying the Paris Games as spiritually or morally corrupted by Western leaders, fueling a sense of us-versus-them among followers of those accounts.
Ultimately, analysts note a pattern of aggressive, sensationalized content constructed to hollow out public trust in institutions and to destabilize the perception of the Olympic event. The orchestration shows how fear can be manufactured and spread through a web of aligned accounts, with the aim of shaping global opinion ahead of a major international competition.
Subscription required to continue reading