Russia President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech as he meets his authorised representatives for the presidential election campaign in the Andreyevsky Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, March 20, 2024.
“The fake websites appeared to have been built to carefully mimic the appearance of legitimate news websites,” Treasury Department officials said in a statement. “The fake websites included embedded images and working links to legitimate sites and even used the impersonated site’s cookie acceptance page.”
The U.S. and Western nations say the Kremlin routinely uses disinformation and media manipulation as part of its arsenal of weapons in its campaign against Ukraine, including fake generated stories on Crimea, the role of “neo-Nazis” in the Ukrainian government and an alleged string of U.S.-Ukrainian bioweapons laboratories in the country.