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• 18 March 2022

The future of research collaborations involving Russia

• Benjamin Plackett 0

Benjamin Plackett is a freelance writer based in Dubbo, Australia.

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On the banks of the Moskva River, just upstream from the Kremlin and Red Square, sits a grandiose network of interconnected concrete buildings. The tallest two are bejewelled with bulky bronze structures, and this unique aesthetic has earned the Moscow-based Russian Academy of Sciences its nickname — ‘golden brains’. Until very recently, the organization had every reason to think that Russian science was deserving of such an epithet.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00761-9

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A short, spoken-word summary from CSIS’s Lauren Burke on her report with Scott Busby, “A Human Rights–Centered Approach to Reconstruction in Ukraine.”

This report reviews the extent to which human rights and governance concerns have been incorporated into Ukraine reconstruction plans and efforts to date and aims to identify key gaps and issues that merit additional attention going forward.

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Event — May 30, 2024

An audio version of Collaboration for a Price: Russian Military-Technical Cooperation with China, Iran, and North Korea , a new report by CSIS’s Max Bergmann, Maria Snegovaya, Tina Dolbaia, and Nick Fenton. This audio was generated with text-to-speech by Eleven Labs.

An audio version of “The Defense Industrial Implications of Putin’s Appointment of Andrey Belousov as Minister of Defense,” a new commentary by CSIS’s Nicholas Velazquez, Maeve Sockwell, and Cynthia Cook. This audio was generated with text-to-speech by Eleven Labs. 

On May 14, 2024, Andrey Belousov assumed the office of Russian minister of defense. He succeeded long-time Putin ally Sergei Shoigu and is set to apply his economic background to posture Russia for a prolonged conflict in Ukraine.

Russia has directly benefited from increased military-technical partnerships with China, Iran, and North Korea, with these countries allowing the Kremlin to maintain consistent intensity of attacks on Ukraine and contributing to Russia’s battlefield successes.

An audio version of “ Why Russia Keeps Rattling the Nuclear Saber ,” a new commentary by CSIS’s Heather Williams. This audio was generated with text-to-speech by Eleven Labs. 

On May 6, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that its navy, air force, and ground missile forces would conduct tactical nuclear drills in the Southern Military District. These risky behaviors have drawn little-to-no response from the wider international community.

Commentary by Heather Williams — May 20, 2024

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• International Attitudes Toward the U.S., NATO and Russia in a Time of Crisis

3. Ratings for Russia drop to record lows

Table of contents.

• Key allies say the U.S. is a reliable partner to their country
• Majorities say partisan divisions are deep in U.S.
• Many favorable on U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, yet say the withdrawal was poorly handled
• Less confidence in Biden in his second year as president
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A median of 85% across 18 countries express an unfavorable opinion of Russia, with majorities in most nations saying they have a very unfavorable opinion of Russia.

In almost every country surveyed, at least seven-in-ten have an unfavorable opinion of Russia. Malaysia is the only country where this is not true; instead, Malaysian opinion is more mixed, with only half saying this. Poles are especially critical of Russia: 97% have an unfavorable opinion, including 91% with a very unfavorable view.

There has been a steep decline in Russian favorability since the question was last asked in 2020, with record low shares in all 18 countries expressing positive opinions of Russia. In nearly every country where there is trend data available, favorability for Russia has dropped by double digits. In Italy, Greece and Poland, positive views of Russia have declined by more than 30 percentage points since the question was last asked (2020 for Italy and 2019 for Greece and Poland).

Consistent with trends for Russian favorability, majorities in almost every country surveyed express little confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin. Across 18 nations, a median of 90% say they do not have confidence in Putin to do the right thing in world affairs, and nearly eight-in-ten (78%) express no confidence at all in Putin.

Malaysia is again an exception to the overall trend, as it is the only country surveyed where a majority expresses confidence in the Russian leader.

Over the last two decades, ratings for Putin have been on a downward trend in many countries, but in 2022, these numbers reached record lows in every nation where trends are available, with double-digit declines in most since the last survey year.                                  

In general, Europeans who support right-wing populist parties in their country are more likely to have confidence in Putin to do the right thing in world affairs. For example, among Greeks who have a favorable view of the Greek Solution party, 55% trust Putin’s handling of international affairs; only 18% trust Putin among those who have an unfavorable view of the party. Similar patterns can be seen among supporters of right-wing populist parties in Germany (Alternative for Germany), the Netherlands (Forum for Democracy and Party for Freedom), the UK (Reform UK), France (National Rally) and Sweden (Sweden Democrats). Yet, while right-wing populist supporters rate Putin more positively than their counterparts, confidence in Putin has decreased more drastically among this group since 2021. In Sweden, for example, 9% of Sweden Democrats supporters trust Putin, down from 30% in 2021. Among those who do not support Sweden Democrats, confidence in Putin was already very low in 2021 (8%) and therefore did not drop as much this year (2%). (For more information on European populist parties, see Appendix .)

A similar pattern exists regarding general ideological leanings. There were large ideological divides in 2021 on attitudes toward Putin, with those on the right of the political spectrum expressing more confidence in him than those on the left. In the current survey, confidence in Putin has decreased more starkly among those on the right, and in many countries both groups have similarly poor views of the Russian president.

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2 Yale researchers are pulling back the curtain on Russia's sanctions-stricken economy — and it's landed them on a list of Putin's enemies

• Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, two Yale researchers, have issued dire predictions for Russia's economy. 
• Their work has landed them on a list of sanctioned individuals in Russia. 
• In their view, the country's economy is in shambles, and Putin could end up losing support of the people. 

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, two researchers at the Yale School of Management, have been targeted for their views on Russia's economy since the war in Ukraine began. 

Over the last few years, they've found themselves on Vladimir Putin's watch list for stating what they see as a simple truth: the Russian economy is in trouble, and there's only so much cherry-picking of the data that can obscure that fact. 

Moscow has fiercely defended its vision of a prospering economy, but the evidence speaks for itself, Sonnenfeld and Tian say. Soaring prices and ailing consumer sentiment have hit key sectors in Russia's economy , and Moscow is paying a huge cost to keep its war machine running.

The nation is in such dire straits that citizens could even start turning on Putin later this year, they predicted, assuming the West continues to supply military and financial aid to Ukraine. 

"We can list for you what Putin has concealed – suddenly – the past three years. If his economy was performing at the level he claims, he'd provide the data ad not hide those facts," Sonnenfeld told Business Insider in an interview. "Putin survives only by cannibalizing Russian businesses – throwing the living room furniture into the furnace to keep the fire burning."

The researchers, who met as a professor-student pair at Yale, have received a lot of criticism for their work on Russia, much of it in the form of hate mail and threatening phone calls.

"I've had a lot of threats on the phone, and my home has been vandalized," Sonnenfeld told BI last summer. "Now we have so many security cameras I can't even have my shirt tails untucked, let alone walk around in my shorts at home."

Both are barred from entering Russia and were put on the nation's sanctioned US citizens list in 2022. 

Still, neither of them regrets their work.

"We're pretty excited about it," they said of their research. "Any of the threats only motivate us to work down much harder."

Putin's top critics

Sonnenfeld, 70, and Tian, 25, didn't plan on getting their names added to a list of Putin's critics.

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Neither are technically economists, but they began researching Russia's economy while compiling a list of companies that exited or scaled back their operations in Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

That list went viral online, and was instrumental in getting more than 1,000 companies to scale back their business in the country, the Yale School of Management says on its website.

At that time, Tian and Sonnenfeld began noticing cracks forming in Russia's economy. Putin has claimed Russia is becoming the new " growth hub " of the world, and the IMF says Russia's economy is on track to grow over 3% this year, more than any other OECD economy, including the US. But that doesn't square with data Sonnenfeld and Tian are seeing, with some pockets of the country's economy in dire shape. 

Activity in Russia's car sector is down around 95%-99%, Sonnenfeld and Tian estimate, and activity in most industries is down at least 60%, they said, despite Putin frequently brushing off the impact of sanctions .

The nation, meanwhile, is still suffering from huge capital losses from when it first invaded Ukraine. Russia lost 1 million citizens , 15% of its millionaires , as well as $19 billion in foreign direct investment in 2022 alone, making its future growth prospects dismal, the researchers say. 

Among their biggest predictions is that the situation in Russia is so bad that the country could eventually turn on Putin , with a shift in the domestic temperament coming as soon as the November US presidential election this year.

That's because if Biden is re-elected, the US will likely continue supplying aid to Ukraine, forcing Russia to continue spending money and lives to keep waging war on Ukraine.  

"Putin has no grand strategy other than to hope Trump wins and cuts a favorable deal with Russia," Tian said. "Russia is in for a world of economic pain for a long time to come."

Positive forecasts on Russia's economy are based on a lack of visibility, Sonnenfeld and Tian say.

The pair began working together when Tian was an undergraduate at Yale, chasing Sonnenfeld around lecture halls. Eventually, Sonnenfeld became Tian's advisor and has mentored Tian for over eight years.

The two researchers are still working on ways to urge the West to tighten and enforce sanctions on Russia. They also continue to update their list of companies that have exited the country in the hope that it will encourage more firms to do the same. 

Colleagues describe Sonnenfeld as opinionated but generous and charismatic. Tian, meanwhile, has a near-photographic memory and is a highly analytical thinker, colleagues mentioned.

"Steven does a lot of the analytic heavy lifting, and I do the flamboyant color," Sonnenfeld said of their work together.

People who have worked with them also say the pair is extremely passionate about their work, and both are often known to answer emails at all hours of the night and early morning.

"We don't believe in regular sleep patterns," Sonnenfeld added. "Actually, we know it's very important, but sometimes when there's a sense of urgency, we do seriously dive into the crisis du jour. We just don't like bullies, whether or not it's Putin or some other bravado."

Watch: The rise and fall of Russian oligarchs

• Main content

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Russian disinformation sites linked to former Florida deputy sheriff, research finds

More than 150 fake local news websites pushing Russian propaganda to U.S. audiences are connected to John Mark Dougan, an American former law enforcement officer living in Moscow, according to a research report published Wednesday by NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation.

The websites, with names like DC Weekly, New York News Daily and Boston Times, look similar to those of legitimate local news outlets and have already succeeded in spreading a number of false stories surrounding the war in Ukraine. Experts warn they could be used to launder disinformation about the 2024 election. 

In an interview over WhatsApp, Dougan denied involvement with the websites. “Never heard of them,” he said. 

Dougan, a former Marine and police officer, fled his home in Florida in 2016 to evade criminal charges related to a massive doxxing campaign he was accused of launching against public officials and was given asylum by the Russian government. Most recently, Dougan has posed as a journalist in Ukraine’s Donbas region, testifying at Russian public hearings and making frequent appearances on Russian state TV . 

He’s now part of a small club of Western expats who have become purveyors of English-language propaganda for Russia. Researchers and cybersecurity companies had previously linked Dougan to the sites. The NewsGuard report published Wednesday is the latest to implicate him in the fake news ring. 

Academic research from Clemson University linked Dougan to the network of fake news websites last year after one of them was found to share an IP address with other sites he ran, including his personal website.

In an interview, Darren Linvill, co-director of the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, called Dougan “a tool of the broader Russian disinformation machine” whose websites “are just one of several mechanisms by which these narratives are distributed.”

Linvill noted the fake news websites had lately veered away from the narrow focus of undermining support for Ukraine. Recent fake articles include the false claims that the FBI wiretapped former President Donald Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Florida, and that the CIA backed a Ukrainian plot to rig the election against Trump.  

“There is no question we are beginning to see a shift in focus toward the U.S. election,” Linvill said. 

Posing as local news, the sites host articles about crime, politics and sports, most of which seem to have been generated with artificial intelligence tools and are attributed to journalists who do not exist . Interspersed within the general news are articles that disparage the U.S., exalt Russia and spread disinformation about topics from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to Covid vaccines.

Researchers say sites attributed to Dougan are marred with telltale signs of his signature, including early website registration records, IP addresses, similar image headers and layouts, being built with WordPress software, seemingly AI-generated prompts mistakenly left in copy and error messages at the ends of articles.

The reach of the campaigns varies. Some of the sites remained active for just weeks with little to no pickup in the wider media. But some fake news stories have gained traction, including several recent posts using forged documents that falsely claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was improperly using foreign aid to enrich himself. Last month, a story on the fake news site The London Crier said Zelenskyy had spent 20 million pounds on a mansion previously owned by King Charles III. 

It followed a story posted to DC Weekly in November that falsely claimed Zelenskyy had used American aid money to buy two yachts. 

Both rumors relied, as the network often does, on videos posted to YouTube by newly created accounts. A site like DC Weekly will publish fake news stories using videos of seemingly AI-generated “leaks” or examples of whistleblowing, and Russian influencers and bot networks will then spread those articles, according to the Clemson researchers. Ultimately, the fake articles are reported as fact by pro-Kremlin media outlets and, in some of the most successful cases, by Western politicos and pundits. 

The rumor about Zelenskyy’s buying yachts was later promoted by Republican members of Congress , including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. 

The author of the new report, McKenzie Sadeghi, NewsGuard’s editor, pointed to the network’s sophisticated use of AI to produce content and make narratives seem credible. 

“In the wrong hands, this technology can be used to spread disinformation at scale,” Sadeghi said. “With this network, we’re seeing that play out exactly.”

What specific support Dougan receives from Russia is unclear. In May, the cybersecurity company Recorded Future reported a “realistic possibility” that the network receives strategic guidance, support or oversight from the Russian government. In March, The New York Times reported that the fake local news ring “appears to involve remnants” of the Internet Research Agency, the troll factory created by the late Putin associate Yevgeny Prigozhin to influence the 2016 presidential election. Previous reporting on Dougan and his more dubious claims — including that he was in possession of leaked documents from murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and secret tapes belonging to Jeffrey Epstein — suggests Dougan may be pursuing wealth, clout or operating from some other motive in addition to a state-sanctioned political agenda.

Dougan was an early creator of fake websites. After he resigned from his job as a sheriff’s deputy in Palm Beach County, Florida, and was fired months later from a subsequent one in Windham, Maine, over sexual harassment claims , he built a network of websites that focused on what he claimed was widespread corruption in Windham, naming local police and town officials in articles. He also reportedly launched a campaign doxxing thousands of federal agents, judges and law enforcement officers, posting their home addresses and salacious allegations online. By 2015 he was operating several websites with official-sounding names like DCWeekly.com and DCPost.org, which hosted made-up articles. In 2016, he fled to Russia following an FBI raid of his home to evade charges linked to his doxxing efforts. 

YouTube banned Dougan last year. On Telegram, he attributed the ban to videos he uploaded alleging a Russian mission to destroy U.S.-run bioweapons labs in Ukraine, a false narrative that would take hold as a justification for Russia’s invasion. Dougan’s ban came on the heels of a report from NewsGuard that highlighted the pro-Russian propaganda on his channel. 

According to co-CEO Steven Brill, NewsGuard’s earlier report and Dougan’s subsequent ban led to a harassment campaign against him. Brill says in a coming book that Dougan impersonated an FBI officer in phone calls to him, left threatening messages and posted YouTube videos showing aerial shots of Brill’s home.

Over WhatsApp, Dougan defended his videos about Brill, citing NewsGuard’s “partnership with the US government” to have his content removed. 

There is no evidence NewsGuard acted in concert with or on behalf of the U.S. government when it investigated Dougan. Asked for proof of such a partnership, Dougan sent a link to his own video, a 31-minute monologue laden with conspiracy theories. He’d reposted it to YouTube.

Brandy Zadrozny is a senior reporter for NBC News. She covers misinformation, extremism and the internet.

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Untangling Disinformation

Russian propaganda in 2024 includes deepfakes, sham websites and social media swarms.

Shannon Bond

RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE

Russian navy recruits perform with the Russian flag in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 4 during a ceremony marking the departure of recruits to join the army. In a year filled with elections around the world, Russia has stepped up its overt and covert propaganda efforts with a goal of weakening international support for Ukraine and undermining democratic institutions. Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A deepfake video of a State Department official falsely claiming a Russian city is a legitimate target for Ukrainian strikes using U.S. weapons.

Pro-Russia social media accounts amplifying stories about divisive political topics such as immigration and campus protests over the war in Gaza.

Sham news sites spoofing real publications or posing as legitimate-sounding outlets with names like D.C. Weekly, the Boston Times and Election Watch.

2024 elections are ripe targets for foes of democracy

Russian propaganda is ramping up in a busy global election year , targeting American voters as well as elections in Europe and the Paris Olympics, according to intelligence officials, internet researchers and tech companies.

“Russia remains the most active foreign threat to our elections,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told senators last month at a briefing about election risks.

Influence operations linked to Russia take aim at a disparate range of targets and subjects around the world. But their hallmarks are consistent: attempting to erode support for Ukraine, discrediting democratic institutions and officials, seizing on existing political divides and harnessing new artificial intelligence tools .

"They're often producing narratives that feel like they're throwing spaghetti at a wall," said Andy Carvin, managing editor at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which tracks online information operations. "If they can get more people on the internet arguing with each other or trusting each other less, then in some ways their job is done."

U.S. elections face more threats from foreign actors and artificial intelligence

Some efforts have been linked directly to the Kremlin, including a network of fake accounts and phony news websites given the name Doppelganger , whose operators have been sanctioned by both the U.S. and the European Union.

The origins of others are still unknown, such as the fabricated video of State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, in which reporters' questions and Miller's response about U.S. policy in the Ukraine war were faked, likely with the help of artificial intelligence. The video circulated on Russian Telegram channels and was picked up by Russian state media and government officials, according to The New York Times .

Russia employed tactics such as exacerbating existing divisive issues and creating fake accounts posing as Americans in its 2016 and 2020 election-meddling efforts, researchers say. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, discrediting Ukraine and amplifying voices in the U.S. and other countries that oppose aid to Ukraine and support for NATO has become a dominant theme of the Kremlin's efforts.

AI fakes raise election risks as lawmakers and tech companies scramble to catch up

"What you can see is they are referencing politics in a certain country, and they are generally tying that to what is going on in Ukraine. The underlying message is, 'Here's why people should not support Ukraine,'" said Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI’s intelligence and investigations team, who previously led global threat intelligence at Facebook's owner, Meta.

Fake accounts, phony websites

The Kremlin relies on what Haines called "a vast multimedia influence apparatus, which consists of its intelligence services, cyber-actors, state media proxies and social media trolls" to pump out propaganda, launder fake and misleading news articles and circulate conspiracy theories.

Facebook takes down Russian network impersonating European news outlets

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has banned Russian media outlets including RT, Sputnik, Voice of Europe and RIA Novosti from publishing or broadcasting within the bloc. That hasn’t stopped RT articles from proliferating across hundreds of other websites widely available in Europe, according to a recent report from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the University of Amsterdam and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

"We discovered RT articles reposted to third-party websites targeting audiences from Iraq to Ethiopia to New Zealand, often without any indication that the content was sourced from a Russian propaganda outlet," the researchers wrote.

Perhaps the most persistent and prevalent Russian online operation is Doppelganger. First identified by researchers at the EU DisinfoLab in 2022, the campaign has impersonated news outlets including the U.K.'s The Guardian , Germany's Der Spiegel , The Washington Post and Fox News, and it has posed as NATO, the Polish and Ukrainian governments, the German police and the French Foreign Ministry.

In addition to operating fake accounts and phony websites, the operation purchased Facebook ads targeting French and German audiences with messages about aid to Ukraine, farmers' protests and the war in Gaza, according to the European nonprofit AI Forensics .

Doppelganger has also set its sights on the Paris Olympics, Microsoft said in a report this week. It used fake French-language news sites to push claims of corruption in the Games' organizing body and to warn of potential violence.

In March, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned two Russian companies identified as being behind Doppelganger — Social Design Agency and Structura — as well as their founders, saying they carried out the campaign "at the direction of the Russian Presidential Administration."

The misinformation-tracking company NewsGuard has connected a separate network of 167 websites "masquerading as independent local news publishers in the U.S." to a former deputy sheriff from Florida who now lives in Moscow.

Using AI tools to create propaganda

The volume of posts, articles and websites that Russian-linked operations produce is being boosted by artificial intelligence — another new factor that sets 2024 apart from previous election cycles.

In a first, OpenAI removes influence operations tied to Russia, China and Israel

Covert influence campaigns based in Russia, as well as in China, Iran and Israel, have begun using AI in their attempts to manipulate public opinion and shape politics, according to recent reports from OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft .

A Russian operation that Microsoft calls Storm-1679 used AI to fake actor Tom Cruise's voice narrating a phony Netflix documentary disparaging the International Olympic Committee.

According to OpenAI, Doppelganger has used its AI tools, which include ChatGPT, to translate articles into other languages and generate social media posts and comments. Another Russian operation, dubbed Bad Grammar, used AI to debug code for a program that automatically posted on Telegram.

The question remains: How effective are Russia's attempts to influence public opinion and democratic elections?

Many online operations that have been publicly identified haven't reached large audiences of real people, researchers say, and AI hasn't made them any more convincing — at least not yet.

"It's absolutely true that when you look at an individual campaign, it's just as likely as not that it hasn't had a huge amount of influence, which is why Russia just does it again and again, or in a different form, or targeting a different group," the Digital Forensic Research Lab's Carvin said. "It's almost like producing cheaply manufactured goods and just getting it out there in the world, hoping that maybe one particular gadget ends up becoming the popular toy of the season, even if the others completely fail."

Many researchers who study disinformation warn against seeing the hand of Russia as an all-powerful puppeteer, especially since so much of what its mouthpieces amplify is homegrown.

"Any potential narrative that's being argued in a given political environment is fodder for Russian operations — which in itself can sound a little crazy and conspiracy-ish," Carvin said. "And in some ways you risk creating a … situation where absolutely everything that's happening online is all Russia's fault."

But, he added, "at the same time, Russia has a lot of resources at its disposal and it's willing to experiment in different ways to see which things stick. … Why not try all of the above and see where it takes you?"

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Nuclear Power Renaissance Runs Parallel to US-Russia Race for Geopolitical Influence

Source: McAlinden Research 06/03/2024

As nuclear power facilities and uranium become deeply involved in the struggle for global influence, McAlinden Research examines how this may impact global uranium supply and uranium ETFs.

The nuclear power renaissance that has been unfolding throughout the world for several years is now blooming a new race for influence in deploying a crop of new reactors across the world. Though a renewed interest in nuclear power stretches back beyond the initiation of Russia's formal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this event sent shockwaves across global energy markets and reshaped global shipments of oil and natural gas. Not only did it serve as a stark reminder of how significant nuclear power can be in bolstering power grids in the face of geopolitical upheaval, but it has gradually frozen the flow of energy products from Russia to the West. Though it has taken longer to reach uranium than other commodities, the building East-West tensions are beginning to envelop the yellow metal as well.

Last month, President Biden signed The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which will initiate the phase-in of a ban on the import of Russian Uranium to the U.S. Though some waivers will be available until 2028, the ban will then be in full effect until 2040. MRP first highlighted the progress of this legislation last August, before it had even been passed by the House of Representatives.

We, The U.S., relied on Russian supplies for about 24% of its enriched uranium demand in 2022 — making it the U.S.'s top foreign supplier for the year. Part of that is simply due to the scale of Russia's state-owned uranium giant, Rosatom, which claims to lead the world in uranium enrichment and rank third in uranium production and fuel fabrication. The White House had previously rolled out a spate of sanctions against Rosatom subsidiaries, but this appears to have done little to halt imports of Russian uranium thus far.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry paid over $800 million to Rosatom and its fuel subsidiaries. The bill also unlocked $2.7 billion in repurposed funding for domestic production of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which was contingent upon the U.S. federal government instituting their new ban on Russian uranium imports. Russia is currently the sole commercial supplier of HALEU, which will be critical to operating the next generation of small modular reactors, but U.S. firms are now having success in deploying small batches of their own supply.

Just weeks after Biden inked his signature on the import ban, Russia took the unprecedented step of signing on with Uzbekistan to assist in building Central Asia's first operational nuclear power plant last week. Uzbekistan and its neighbor Kazakhstan have served as critical miners and exporters of the yellow metal for many years but have not had access to their own facilities to utilize refined fuels derived from uranium — aside from a prototype in the latter nation, which was shuttered in 1999. Kazakhstan may revive nuclear power in the nation with the eventual construction of its own power plant, but such a move will be subject to a coming referendum that has not yet been given a date.

Despite the country being home to massive deposits of uranium, as well as the world's single largest producer of natural uranium in Kazatomprom (OTC:NATKY), there is some lingering ambivalence among the populace toward nuclear power due to hundreds of Soviet-era nuclear weapons tests taking place in the country over a period of four decades with little regard for local populations and ecology.

Russian President Putin said Moscow would dedicate $400 million to a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in Uzbekistan. This program follows the initiation of Russian gas flows from state-owned Gazprom to sites in Uzbekistan last year and the promise of a further expansion from an annual flow of 3.8 billion cubic meters (m 3 ) to 11.0 billion m 3 by as early as next year.

More refined Russian nuclear fuel will likely be flowing to Uzbekistan alongside the deluge of natural gas. Nuclear power plants are highly specialized and complex facilities that not many companies have experience building. Smaller nations with little or no experience in this field rely on firms from larger markets that have effectively employed nuclear power and the ongoing spread of these facilities will carry with it a diplomatic edge.

As Russia's war in Ukraine has turned away buyers of its energy supplies in the West, the country's oil and gas enterprises have shifted the flow of these products to the East, specifically to China, India, and Southeast Asia. That reorientation is now expanding to Central Asia. One area of Europe where Russia has been able to maintain diplomatic leverage is on the periphery, with nations like long-time ally Belarus and Hungary — a landlocked country that cannot rely on sea-borne shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and has remained more tethered to Russian pipeline gas than other regions of Europe.

These two nations just signed onto their own nuclear power-related agreement that will allow Belarus to assist in the construction of Hungary's second nuclear power plant, which has been under construction by Rosatom since 2014. Belarus's experience with similar nuclear power tech is meant to assist Hungarian efforts with personnel training and insights into the handling of radioactive waste.

The next frontier of this ongoing struggle for influence is forming in the heart of the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia has been mulling over several different bids to help it debut a civilian nuclear program in the country. That would include the construction of a nuclear power plant and, potentially, the possibility of uranium enrichment on Saudi soil.

Though the U.S. has been Saudi Arabia's preferred partner, the Kingdom's relations with the U.S. have frayed as a result of Riyadh's continued friendliness toward Moscow in spite of the latter's aggressiveness in Europe. U.S. assistance to Saudi Arabia's burgeoning nuclear program has been a fundamental component of a potential normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations for the first time ever. However, this has become a much trickier stumbling block since last autumn when Hamas's terror attack against Israel sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. The Kingdom is not totally reliant on the U.S. being its sole partner in its nuclear program, as the Saudis have fielded offers from China, France, and Russia to take part in building the prospective nuclear power station they have been planning.

One key nuclear power development that falls somewhat outside the east-west struggle for influence but provides a new landmark for the rebounding fortunes of nuclear power is Japan's looming restart of its Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) — the largest in the world. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. started loading nuclear fuel into one of the plant's seven reactors in April, and the upcoming resurrection of KKNPP would mark the first restart of any of its nuclear reactors that were halted after a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Though only one death can be directly attributed to the meltdown at the Japanese power plant after it was hit by a Tsunami, the event turned much of the world off to nuclear fission more than a decade ago.

That era of anti-nuclear sentiment appears to have only recently met a symbolic end, with the release of treated irradiated water from the destroyed Fukushima plant last August.

In April 2022, MRP noted that 53% of Japanese respondents to a survey from Nikkei said nuclear reactors should restart if safety can be ensured. That marked the first time since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 that an increasing role for nuclear had been favored in the semi-regular surveys conducted by the newspaper. Along with the passage of time, rising power costs have spurred the Japanese back toward a demand for nuclear power. Just 12 of the nation's 33 operable reactors are back online after the Fukushima crisis, but a resurgence in reactor operations in Japan would provide a material increase in demand for uranium supplies.

Investors can gain exposure to uranium miners and the production of nuclear components via the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (NYSE:URNM) and Global X Uranium ETF (NYSE:URA).

Important Disclosures:

Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports, Street Smart, or their officers. The author is wholly responsible for the accuracy of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Any disclosures from the author can be found below. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy.

• This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

McAlinden Research Partners Disclosures This report has been prepared solely for informational purposes and is not an offer to buy/sell/endorse or a solicitation of an offer to buy/sell/endorse Interests or any other security or instrument or to participate in any trading or investment strategy. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is made or can be given with respect to the sequence, accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information in this Report. Unless otherwise noted, all information is sourced from public data. McAlinden Research Partners is a division of Catalpa Capital Advisors, LLC (CCA), a Registered Investment Advisor. References to specific securities, asset classes and financial markets discussed herein are for illustrative purposes only and should not be interpreted as recommendations to purchase or sell such securities. CCA, MRP, employees and direct affiliates of the firm may or may not own any of the securities mentioned in the report at the time of publication.

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Fake News Reports and Videos Seek to Undermine the Paris Olympics

Russian propagandists are spoofing broadcasters and mimicking French and U.S. intelligence agencies to stoke fear about security at the Games.

By Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers

Julian E. Barnes, who covers U.S. intelligence agencies, and Steven Lee Myers, who covers misinformation, have been reporting on Russian efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election.

With its athletes barred from competing in the Summer Olympics under the country’s flag, Russia has turned its fury on the Games and this year’s host, Paris.

Russian propagandists have created an hourlong documentary, spoofed news reports and even mimicked French and American intelligence agencies to issue fake warnings urging people to avoid the Games, according to a report released on Sunday by Microsoft.

The report details the disinformation campaign created by a group the company calls Storm-1679. The campaign appears to have accelerated since March, flooding social media with short videos raising alarms about possible terrorist attacks and stoking fears about safety.

The operation, while aimed at the Games, is using various techniques to spread disinformation that could also be employed in European and U.S. elections.

American and French officials have tracked the campaign. One American official said that Russian disinformation, spread by the Kremlin via social media, continued to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.

The group has also tried to goad fact checkers into examining its claims, hoping to use the attention to spread the disinformation to new audiences as it is called out.

For months, French officials have focused on the ways Russia could seek to undermine the Games. Hackers affiliated with Russian intelligence disrupted the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, and French officials are preparing for more cyberattacks this year.

France raised its terrorism warning level after an Islamic State attack in Moscow in March and threats against high-profile soccer matches in Paris. France also has increased security for the Olympics. Neither French nor American officials are warning people to stay away from the Games, but the Russian disinformation campaign is designed to scare people into doing just that.

Researchers at Microsoft and U.S. government officials have identified a number of groups affiliated with the Kremlin that are spreading disinformation aimed at Europe and the United States.

Some are directed by aides to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Others are affiliated with Russian intelligence. Some hide behind fake nonprofit groups. Others are veterans of the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg troll farm that spread election propaganda in 2016. The agency was run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of a mercenary group who led a rebellion against the Kremlin and then was killed in a plane crash last year.

Storm-1679 appears separate from those efforts, according to Microsoft. The group’s disinformation is aligned with Kremlin propaganda, but few specifics about it are known.

Bellingcat, a research group that uses publicly available data to conduct open source investigations, has been targeted by disinformation videos and has watched the campaign unfold. Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, says his group has not established whether Storm-1679 is backed by the Russian government or is independent.

“It could be Prigozhin 2.0 doing work for the Kremlin, or an over-imaginative pro-Russian blogger doing it for kicks; we just don’t know at this point,” Mr. Higgins said.

The work began in earnest last summer with the release of a fake documentary about the International Olympic Committee, expropriating Netflix’s logo and using an A.I.-powered voice impersonating Tom Cruise. The committee succeeded in having the video — a spoof of the 2013 film “Olympus Has Fallen” — removed from YouTube. The attacks have continued , though, with persistent efforts to discredit its leadership, the committee said in March, citing a campaign that used fake recordings of what purported to be telephone calls by officials of the African Union on behalf of Russia.

The group known as Storm-1679 now appears to be making shorter videos that are easier to create. It used to focus on disparaging Ukrainian refugees in the West, but after President Emmanuel Macron of France began to publicly consider sending French troops to Ukraine, it shifted to the Olympics.

Microsoft estimates that Storm-1679 produces three to eight faked videos a week, in English and French, with many impersonating the BBC, Al Jazeera and other broadcasters. The group appears to respond quickly to news events, like protests in New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific. Others focus on the prospect of a terrorist attack in Paris.

Most of the videos pretending to be from the C.I.A. and French intelligence are relatively simple. They are unlike anything the C.I.A. has actually produced, but to unsuspecting readers online, they could appear legitimate, using the agency’s logo and stark white-on-black typography.

“They are trying to cultivate an anticipation of violence,” Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Digital Threat Analysis Center, said of the group behind the fake posts. “They want people to be fearful of going to the Olympics.”

A C.I.A. spokesman said a video that circulated online in February purporting to be a warning from the agency warning of terrorist attacks during the Games was a fabrication.

In February, Viginum, the government agency in France that combats disinformation online, identified the fake C.I.A. video as part of a campaign it called Matryoshka, after the nesting dolls that are popular in Russia.

The campaign was also responsible for fake videos about the domestic French intelligence agency, the French government said. A person briefed on the French investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments, said that Viginum and the French Foreign Ministry were quickly identifying the Russian disinformation from the group aimed at undermining the Olympics.

French officials and Microsoft say one of the group’s tactics appears to be trying to get the attention of fact-checking organizations.

“Normally, when Storm-1679 posts content on Telegram, it circulates there for a day or two and then goes away,” Mr. Watts said. “The content doesn’t normally travel from one platform to another, but when their false content is fact-checked by accounts with a large following, the content gets far more views and in front of new and different audiences.”

Mr. Higgins said if baiting fact-checkers was part of the group’s strategy, it did not appear to be an effective one. Bellingcat, he said, is aware that reporting on disinformation can draw attention to the propaganda, and that is factored in when his organization fact-checks videos.

“It doesn’t appear that their messages are getting amplified,” Mr. Higgins said. “Even among the usual circles who lap up Russian disinformation, we don’t see them being shared at all.”

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

Inside the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics

News and Analysis

Seeking to undermine the Paris Olympics, Russian propagandists  are spoofing broadcasters and mimicking French and U.S. intelligence agencies to stoke fear about security at the Games.

Ahead of the Olympics, the global agency tasked with policing doping in sports is facing a growing crisis  as it fends off allegations it helped cover up the positive tests of elite Chinese swimmers .

Undocumented workers played a larger and more dangerous role  in delivering the Games than the Macron administration acknowledges.

A Guide to the Games

More ‘Open’ Signs: With millions of visitors expected in Paris, many shopkeepers, bakers and restaurateurs are forgoing their annual summer vacations .

A New Gastronomic Course: In the Olympic dining hall near Paris, carbon imprint will outweigh cassoulet as chefs consider the environmental impact of French cuisine. There won’t even be French fries .

Escaping the Games: Even if you’re visiting France for the Games, you may want to take a cultural break like a local. Here are some suggestions .

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