The Russian covert affect community CopyCop has considerably expanded its disinformation marketing campaign, establishing over 200 new fictional media web sites since March 2025.
This enlargement represents a marked escalation in Russian data warfare efforts, concentrating on democratic nations with refined synthetic intelligence-driven content material technology and more and more polished deception techniques.
CopyCop, additionally designated as Storm-1516, operates as a cornerstone of Russia’s broader affect operations ecosystem.
The community capabilities via a coordinated infrastructure of pretend media retailers, fictional fact-checking organizations, and impersonation web sites designed to undermine Western democratic establishments and erode worldwide assist for Ukraine.
Mixed with beforehand documented operations, the community now operates over 300 web sites established all through 2025, demonstrating unprecedented scale and attain in Russian affect operations.
Recordedfuture analysts famous that these web sites serve twin functions inside CopyCop’s operational framework.
CopyCop web site partiroyaliste[.]fr impersonating a French royalist political occasion (Supply – Recordedfuture)
First, they disseminate focused affect content material ready by the Moscow-based Middle for Geopolitical Experience and community operator John Mark Dougan.
Second, they publish giant portions of synthetic intelligence-generated content material that includes pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-Western narratives designed to poison the worldwide data surroundings.
The community’s infrastructure demonstrates refined technical implementation and operational safety measures.
CopyCop operators register domains in coordinated batches throughout linked infrastructure, sustaining dormant web sites that passively generate content material till activated for focused campaigns.
This strategy supplies operational flexibility whereas constructing credibility via sustained content material publication throughout a number of fictional media manufacturers.
The community’s geographic enlargement contains new concentrating on of Canada, Armenia, and Moldova, whereas sustaining established operations towards america and France.
CopyCop has diversified its linguistic attain, publishing content material in Turkish, Ukrainian, and Swahili languages by no means beforehand featured by the operation.
These developments mirror strategic adaptation to maximise viewers engagement and exploit regional political vulnerabilities.
Self-Hosted Massive Language Mannequin Infrastructure
CopyCop’s most important technical evolution entails the deployment of self-hosted, uncensored giant language fashions based mostly on Meta’s Llama 3 structure.
This represents a deliberate shift away from industrial Western AI companies, addressing operational safety considerations whereas enabling unrestricted content material technology aligned with Russian propaganda targets.
Technical evaluation reveals CopyCop operators make the most of both the dolphin-2.9-llama3-8b or Llama-3-8B-Lexi-Uncensored fashions, each standard uncensored variants out there via open-source platforms like HuggingFace.
Python script utilizing Ollama proven by Dougan in a TV interview with French media (Supply – Recordedfuture)
Proof supporting this evaluation contains operational artifacts discovered inside printed articles, corresponding to data cutoff references to January 2023 and inconsistent JSON output formatting that implies mannequin efficiency degradation typical of “abliterated” or uncensored language fashions.
The community’s technical infrastructure contains refined deployment mechanisms revealed via John Mark Dougan’s inadvertent publicity throughout French media interviews.
Video footage captured Python scripts using the Ollama inference framework, particularly together with capabilities named restart_ollama() that show operational deployment of native language mannequin situations.
This infrastructure operates from Russian-controlled servers, with GRU monetary backing supporting the computational sources required for sustained content material technology.
# Instance code construction noticed in CopyCop operations
def restart_ollama():
# Restart native LLM inference service
subprocess.name([‘systemctl’, ‘restart’, ‘ollama’])
return True
The technical implementation creates important operational benefits for CopyCop’s content material technology capabilities.
Self-hosted fashions eradicate exterior dependencies on Western AI service suppliers whereas enabling fine-tuning on Russian state media content material supplied by TASS and different Kremlin-aligned sources.
Nonetheless, this strategy introduces efficiency constraints, as evidenced by frequent operational safety failures together with uncovered LLM artifacts in printed content material and structured output formatting errors that betray automated technology.
Recordedfuture researchers recognized particular situations the place CopyCop articles contained express mannequin directions, corresponding to disclaimers stating “Please notice that this rewrite goals to supply a transparent and concise abstract of the unique textual content whereas sustaining key particulars” and metadata referencing “goal and factual” tone necessities.
These artifacts show the community’s ongoing challenges in sustaining operational safety whereas scaling content material manufacturing via automated programs.
The infrastructure enlargement allows CopyCop to provide content material at unprecedented scale whereas concentrating on a number of audiences concurrently.
The community maintains regionalized subdomain constructions, such because the “Truefact” cluster that includes africa.truefact.information for Swahili content material, turkey.truefact.information for Turkish audiences, and ukraine.truefact.information for Ukrainian-language disinformation.
This strategy maximizes content material distribution whereas offering resilience towards particular person area takedowns via mirrored internet hosting throughout a number of subdomains.
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