Russian bot network spreads fake quotes from Hollywood stars

Internet bot network distributed on the social network X, fake quotes from Hollywood stars about the role of the USSR in the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Agency publication, which drew attention to this, claims that we are talking about a large-scale disinformation campaign abroad, organized from Russia.

In the run-up to May 9, bots published 28 tweets with photographs of 13 stars and phrases about the Soviet Union and the Red Army that they allegedly said at different times. In fact, all the phrases turned out to be made up and attributed.

According to the Agency, actor Harrison Ford never said that Americans “are being imposed a distorted history of the Second World War – supposedly the United States won alone,” actress Natalie Portman did not claim that the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz was liberated not by the US Army, but by the Red Army The army, and the actor and director David Duchovny did not argue that “Soviet Russia dealt the German army such a strong blow that no other country in the world could have dealt.”

Bots attributed the phrase to actress Mila Kunis, who was born in Chernivtsi, saying that “people whose idol is Hitler’s comrade-in-arms have come to power in Ukraine.”

The Agency notes that this is not the first time that bot accounts managed from Russia have massively published phrases of famous people on social networks that they have never said. Thus, in November 2023, accounts associated with the Russian government distributed fake quotes from Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Ronaldo and other stars demanding that the West stop helping Ukraine, and in April of this year, bots distributed a fake video with writer Katrin Himmler, in which she allegedly calls “don’t hand over Ukrainians to the bloody dictator Zelensky.”