Russian operatives are ramping up disinformation operations to malign Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign by disseminating conspiracy-laden videos, Microsoft said Tuesday, amid heightened alert over foreign influence operations targeting the US election.
The report comes after the US government accused Russia’s state news agency RT earlier this month of seeking to influence the presidential election in November and imposed sanctions on its top editors.
Starting in late August, a Kremlin-aligned influence group called Storm-1516 produced two fake videos to discredit the campaign of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, Microsoft said in a report. Both videos garnered millions of views.
One video purported to show a group of alleged Harris supporters attacking a supposed Trump rally attendee, while the second featured an actor peddling fabricated claims that Harris paralyzed a girl in a 2011 hit-and-run case.
This second video was disseminated through a website posing as a local San Francisco media outlet, the report said.
A second Russian group, known as Storm-1679, pivoted its focus from the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to publish false videos discrediting Harris.