How Putin sparked the bedbug panic

Punaise de lit. In German: bedbug.

Rarely has a small insect caused more excitement.

Reports of bed bugs reached their peak in the fall of 2023. Sometimes you had to get the impression that France was infected and that no one was safe from the blood-sucking parasites.

This article examines the question of what Vladimir Putin and his criminal war of aggression against Ukraine have to do with the “bedbug panic.”

Putin and the leeches – a perfect “match”

The Russian state, led by former intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, takes every opportunity to harm the West. This is illustrated by the bedbug panic last fall.

First of all, it is important to note that the Russians are responsible for many things, but not for the emergence of bed bugs. Parasites have been increasing in France for decades. Those responsible have not been able to control the problem with effective measures. According to a July 2023 survey, one in ten French households has been infected in the past five years.

Small consolation: the blood-sucking animals do not transmit any serious diseases. But that did not help against the panic that arose in French society – caused by authentic messages on social media.

And that was Putin’s hour.

The French private broadcaster BFM TV stated that the Russians were not the origin of this (bedbug) “psychosis”. But they would have been able to absorb the rising tide of outrage perfectly.

Before we delve into how the Russians stoked the bedbug panic through a targeted disinformation campaign, we should consider the role that renowned journalists played in the case.

Self-critically, it must be admitted that the media easily picked up the problem of bedbugs circulating on social networks and increased the excitement.

Such a media climate was the ideal breeding ground for a species that, like bedbugs, prefers to remain in the dark: the common Russian internet troll.

The French secret services warned in October 2023 that fear was being deliberately incited on Facebook and other social media platforms. And with that Russian operation “Doppelgänger”. An advanced disinformation method that has been running since at least May 2022, according to experts from the EU DisinfoLab.

How does Russia deal with such disinformation campaigns?

Putin has worked for the Russian secret service KGB for many years and is very familiar with methods of psychological warfare. And even though German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other high-ranking politicians do not want to admit it publicly: Russia has been waging war against the West for a long time. It’s a hybrid war.

In the Internet age, the Kremlin operates and finances a powerful troll army. She is trained to flood the major platforms with Russian propaganda and fake messages. Goal: create uncertainty.

Reporters from the German Watson media partner T-Online have been intensively investigating the issue since 2022. Russian doppelgänger operation. These are fake journalistic articles that come from cloned media websites. These websites look, at least to laypeople, as if they are the online presence of well-known media companies.

The experts warn: unfiltered Russian war propaganda is published on hundreds of pseudo-news portals – also in French, German or English. And the links to fake messages find an unsuspecting audience via Telegram, Facebook, TikTok and Co.

Moreover, Russia also uses the doppelgänger method to undermine trust in real journalistic media and their reporting.

How do we know this?

The French secret services have found what they were looking for in the disinformation campaign about the bedbug panic, according to a media report from October:

According to research by T-Online, the professional trolls work as a team to achieve the greatest possible impact: some fake accounts publish the fake media articles, as well as videos and photos on their own profile pages. The links to the fake articles or posts would then be posted via other social media accounts in the comments sections of well-known and frequently visited public pages.

Moreover, the Facebook group Meta and other advertising-funded platforms make good money from the work of the Russian trolls. The Kremlin spends a lot of money on contributions. This is flushed to the user’s news feed.

According to research by T-Online, “obviously fake dialogues under messages” are also used to mislead social media users. If someone goes to a promoted post on one of the fake sites, he or she will already encounter a number of fake comments. This wrongly gives the impression that many people are critical of the sanctions against Russia.

The Russian fake posts are also being spread by Putin’s troll army beyond popular social media platforms. For example, in the public comments section of the websites of major commercial companies.

What helps against Russian disinformation?

Bed bugs emerge at night and hide in mattresses and other dark places during the day.

Russian trolls also shun the light. By this we do not mean the Western supporters of Putin and the enemies of democracy who voluntarily take action against Ukraine and its supporters. These are professional actors paid by the Kremlin who specialize in online propaganda and disinformation.

The internet collective NAFO has found an effective weapon to destroy the Russian trolls on X (Twitter) and Co. to combat: a concentrated load of black humor, administered in the form of bitter memes and brutal statements.

The question remains what the state does.

According to the French secret services, the Russian state propaganda channel RT (formerly ‘Russia Today’) was also involved in the disinformation about bed bugs. Its contents may no longer be distributed in the EU, but the Federal Council continues to allow this in Switzerland.

France is completely different. In our western neighbor, the Macron government has the 2021 Special service VIGINUM brought to life. Its mission is to expose disinformation campaigns aimed at “destabilizing public opinion in France and weakening public support for Ukraine.”

The network specialists have had their hands full since then. They also took part in the fight against the doppelgänger operations, which, according to previous information, targeted Ukraine, at least five EU countries, Britain and the US.

The motive remains the same: Russia is trying to paint a false picture of chaos and political failure in Europe to upset its citizens. This is especially explosive in an election year like 2024.

The question is how long we just want to watch.

Sources