From Russia, elaborate tales of fake journalists
Zelensky the target of a new online gambit
A young man calling himself Mohamed al-Alawi appeared in a YouTube video in August. He described himself as an investigative journalist in Egypt with a big scoop: The mother-in-law of Ukraine’s president had purchased a villa near Angelina Jolie’s in El Gouna, a resort town on the Red Sea.
The story was not true. The owner of the villa refuted it. Also disconnected from reality: alAlawi’s claim to being a journalist.
Still, his story caromed through social media and news outlets from Egypt to Nigeria to Russia — which, according to researchers, is where the story all began.
The story seemed to fade, but not for long. Four months later, two new videos appeared on YouTube. They said al-Alawi had been beaten to death in Hurghada, a town about 20 miles south of El Gouna. The suspected killers, according to the videos: Ukraine’s secret service agents.
These claims were no more factual than the first, but they gave new life to the old lie. Another round of posts and news reports ultimately reached millions of internet users around the world, elevating the narrative so much that it was even echoed by members of the US Congress while debating continued military assistance to Ukraine.
Ever since its forces invaded two years ago, Russia has unleashed a torrent of disinformation to try to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.
This saga, though, introduced a new gambit: a protracted and elaborately constructed narrative built online around a fictitious character and embellished with seemingly realistic detail and a plot twist worthy of Netflix.
“They never brought back a character before,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at South Carolina’s Clemson University, who has extensively studied Russian disinformation.
The campaign shows how deftly Russia’s information warriors have shifted tactics and targets as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, just as Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have adjusted tactics after devastating battlefield losses.
Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news sites.
A video appeared on TikTok last month claiming to show a Ukrainian doctor working for Pfizer accusing the company of conducting unlawful tests on children.
The tale attributed to al-Alawi is not even the only baseless allegation that Zelensky had secretly purchased properties abroad using Western financial assistance. Other versions — each seemingly tailored for a specific geographic audience — have detailed a mansion in Vero Beach, Fla., and a retreat in Germany once used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda.
The Russians have “demonstrated adaptability through the war on Ukraine,” Microsoft wrote in a report that disclosed Russia’s fraudulent use of recorded messages by famous actors and celebrities on the Cameo app to try to smear Zelensky as a drug addict.
Even when debunked, fabrications like these have been exceedingly difficult to extinguish entirely.
YouTube took down the initial video of the character Mohamed al-Alawi, linking it to two other accounts that had previously violated the company’s policies. The accusation still circulates, however, especially on X and Telegram, both of which experts say do little to block accounts generating inauthentic or automated activity. Some of the posts about the video appear to have used text or audio created with artificial intelligence tools; many are amplified by networks of bots intended to create the impression that the content is popular.
What links the narratives to Russia is not only the content disparaging Ukraine but also the networks that circulate them. They include news outlets and social media accounts that private and government researchers have linked to previous Kremlin campaigns.
“They’re trolling for a susceptible (and seemingly abundant) slice of citizens who amplify their garbage enough to muddy the waters of our discourse and from there our policies,” said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks extremist activity online and investigated the false claims about the villa.
The video first appeared Aug. 20 on a newly created YouTube account that had no previous activity, according to the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a global research organization in London, which traced the video’s spread.
The man appeared in a poorly lit room reading from his computer screen, which was reflected in his thick glasses. He appeared to be a real person, but it has not been possible to verify his actual identity. No one by the name of Mohamed alAlawi appears to have produced any previous articles or videos, as would be expected of a journalist. According to Active Fence, an internet security company, the character has no educational or work history, and no network of friends or social connections online.
The video, though, showed what purported to be photographs of a purchase contract and of the villa itself, creating a veneer of authenticity for credulous viewers. The property is, in fact, part of a resort owned by Orascom Development, whose website highlights El Gouna’s “yearround sunshine, shimmering lagoons, sandy beaches and azure waters.”
An article about the video’s claim appeared two days later as a paid advertisement, or branded content, on Punch, a news outlet in Nigeria, as well as three other Nigerian websites that aggregate news and entertainment content.
The article had the byline of Arthur Nkono, who according to internet searches does not appear to have written any other articles. The article quoted a political scientist, Abdrulrahman Alabassy, who likewise appears not to exist except in accounts linking the villa to the corrupt use of Western financial aid to Ukraine. (Punch, which later removed the post, did not respond to requests for comment.)
A day later, the claim made its first appearance on X in a post by Sonja van den Ende, an activist in the Netherlands, whose articles have previously appeared on propaganda outlets linked to the Russian government, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Russia state television networks Channel One, Rossiya 24, and RT (in Arabic and German) then reported it as a major revelation uncovered by a renowned Egyptian investigative journalist.