Adversary Intelligence — 2026-11-12

OCCRP Investigation Reveals Hundreds of Global Figures Featured in Russian Doppelganger Disinformation Campaign

BLUFMoscow's Doppelganger operation has industrialized the recruitment of Western voices through non-Russian intermediaries, and the migration to Turkish-hosted domains suggests the pipeline will adapt faster than Western exposure efforts can shut it down.

OCCRP, working with Delfi Estonia, examined a catalogue exposed by a hack of the Russian propaganda site RRN and identified more than 500 interviewees from over 50 countries, who gave roughly 500 interviews that generated about 1,800 articles on Doppelgänger-linked sites 12. OCCRP contacted more than 60 interviewees; most did not respond or could not recall who arranged the interviews 1. Five said Brazilian Dugin follower Raphael Machado set up their interviews, and four, including former U.K. MP Matthew Gordon-Banks, said a man calling himself Nikolay Maslov approached them 1. Gordon-Banks denied deliberately joining propaganda operations. The Nerve reported that Lembit Öpik, a former Lib Dem MP, appeared on RRN and did not answer its questions about who approached him 2, a finding Nation.Cymru relayed 3.

Analysis
The leaked RRN catalogue shows Moscow's influence apparatus recruiting Western interviewees at scale, and some intermediaries were not Russian: Brazilian Dugin followers, including Raphael Machado, arranged interviews for five subjects, and a self-described journalist, Nikolay Maslov, approached four others. Former officials such as Matthew Gordon-Banks and Lembit Öpik now face reputational exposure, though most contacted interviewees did not answer or could not say who arranged their interviews. Two surviving sites on Turkish domains still publish Western interviews, so the pipeline appears to have moved rather than closed. Confidence is low: this rests on one original OCCRP investigation, secondary outlets add no independent verification, and no document shows who directed the interviewers. Contractors chasing Kremlin funding may have inflated the output, with little real audience influence and many interviewees simply willing commentators.

3 sources