Joint US-Russiya disinformation front in France: Moscow manufactured it, MAGA pushed it further

Russia-linked Operation Overload tried to convince French audiences through fake newscasts that the unrest in France was caused by immigration, while Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke under their own names about Islam threatening France. In a French foreign ministry survey, the most-viewed posts from MAGA circles and Israeli accounts far outstripped those of pro-Russian accounts. The gap is hardly bad news for Moscow, because if the American president also offers an explanation of a European crisis that serves the Kremlin's interests, there is no need to measure the success of the Russian operation solely by the view counts of its own accounts.

According to an internal EU assessment presented on November 9, Operation Overload spread videos disguised as Western media reports to French audiences. Some clips falsely claimed that migrants had raped protesters, others stoked fears of an imminent terrorist attack. According to EU analysts, the network tried to portray the French leadership as both powerless and increasingly authoritarian, while also spreading the message that European governments were more concerned with Ukraine than with the problems of their own citizens. Protests over rising prices and deteriorating public services were already underway when the network latched onto them; however, the EU's investigation found no evidence that they had been triggered from abroad — the Russian operation's responsibility lies in what it did afterward: trying to rewrite what the French crisis was about using fabricated crimes.

Between October 16 and 18, the French foreign ministry examined the ten most-viewed X posts from each of three groups of accounts. Posts by MAGA-linked politicians, media outlets and influencers received more than 49 million views, those by a group bringing together Israeli officials, government accounts, media outlets and influencers received more than 35 million, and pro-Russian accounts received 2.8 million. This covers three days and thirty posts, and the 2.8-million figure represents only the leading pro-Russian accounts; Operation Overload's own reach is not known separately.

On Truth Social, Trump blamed uncontrolled immigration, brushed aside grievances about the state of schools, then declared that "France is burning!" and called for closing the borders. A week before the Israeli election, Netanyahu spoke of an extremist Islamic invasion, going so far as to claim that the warning he had given Macron after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack had come true in Paris. On October 21, in Doha, the French president called the statements made in the wake of the information manipulation following the unrest unacceptable and foolish, and when asked whether he meant Trump, he said only: "Among others." Trump's Truth Social posts are of course not part of the French X survey, but the parallel lies in the explanation: the French took their grievances against their own government to the streets, and the foreign right wrote on top of it that it was an Islamic takeover.

In Trump's case, this is also backed by an official foreign policy direction: the White House's National Security Strategy, dated November 2025, lists among its European priorities strengthening resistance within European countries to Europe's current direction, and sees cause for optimism in the growing influence of what it calls patriotic (sovereign), mostly pro-Russian and extremist European parties. The political consequences are already here: when the American government encourages forces that weaken joint European action while seeking strategic stability with Moscow, it pushes Europe, on certain issues, in the same direction the Kremlin would want, because it is easier for Russia to bargain separately with governments that are at odds with each other over sanctions and support for Ukraine.

In Netanyahu's case, concrete decisions also reinforce the "pro-Russian" label: on February 24, 2025, Israel voted together with the United States and Russia against the UN General Assembly resolution affirming Ukraine's territorial integrity. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government's judicial overhaul gave greater political influence over the selection of judges, which experts at the Israel Democracy Institute assessed as a step threatening judicial independence. Given all this, there is plenty to discuss when Netanyahu hands out advice to European democracies. In the French affair, he obviously has to take responsibility for his own statement, just as the Russian networks do for the fake footage, but the political effects of the two can converge without either side having received instructions from the other.

Where do MAGA and Russian disinformation converge?

We have a more concrete answer to this than simply that they sometimes say the same thing. According to a 2024 indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice, two employees of Russian state broadcaster RT secretly funneled nearly ten million dollars to a Tennessee media company that produced videos for American audiences. According to the indictment, the origin of the Russian money was concealed, while RT staff had a say in the publication of the content — all of which illustrates well what questions are worth asking when content favorable to Moscow keeps appearing, again and again, on a seemingly homegrown American political media channel. Who paid for the show, who suggested the topic, and who made sure it reached the audience?

Trump's own platform, Truth Social, was not left out of Russian operations either. In 2022, Graphika examined 35 fake profiles in a suspected Russian influence network. The accounts operated across four platforms in total — Gab, Gettr, Parler and Truth Social — targeting American right-wing audiences, spreading claims about election fraud, and trying to weaken support for Ukraine. Researchers also documented cases in which content from the network was carried over to larger platforms by other users. From those 35 profiles, it is impossible to say how many fake or Russia-linked accounts exist on Truth Social today, nor who further shared Trump's posts about France, but the documented crossover nonetheless exists. That is precisely why, in the French case too, it would be worth tracing where each claim first appeared, who passed it along, and when it reached accounts that were already pushing the content to millions.

The Russian network had its own job to do in France: it falsified the news, cast suspicion on migrants, and tried to drive a wedge between the French and Ukraine. The responsibility of MAGA circles and Netanyahu begins where they picked up the very same fear for their own political purposes and lent it their own authority. If all we take away from this is that pro-Russian accounts came third in a three-day survey, we miss precisely the most interesting question: how much work does it save Moscow when what it still has to package as a fake newscast is something that heads of state, leading politicians and Western influencers are already willing to sell under their own names?

Ugar