Russia is intensifying its efforts to spread pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine messages in the United States and the West, using influence-laundering techniques to hide the efforts of its intelligence agencies to manipulate public opinion, according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence analysis.
Efforts by Russian intelligence agencies to shape public debate leading up to the 2016 U.S. election focused on methods designed to have short-term effects, like exacerbating tensions inside the United States through social media posts.
But the newly declassified U.S. analysis looks at how Russian intelligence services — in particular, the Federal Security Service, or FSB — have been secretly using allies inside nominally independent organizations to spread propaganda and cultivate ties with rising leaders, efforts that are intended to play out over long periods of time.