For three years now, I have been closely observing the evolution of Galia Ackerman’s fake cognitive warfare media outlet: Desk Russie. Founded in January 2021, the outlet’s name leaves no doubt about its ambitions: to “re-inform” about a virtual and propagandistic reality regarding Russia. However, the main subject is still, and always, Ukraine, along with regular attacks on the multipolar world, BRICS, Venezuela, China, and even Trump’s camp in the USA. The outlet presents itself as an “essential” source for understanding the Ukrainian conflict and Russia and claims to have over 200 authors, journalists, and activists. In reality, it bears disturbing similarities to the fake outlet exposed by the Russians in 2018, Inform Napalm, plus an abnormal presence of agents of the foreign-backed 5th column of the Russian opposition. An analysis of the empty shell of Desk Russie, which is indeed a fake media with, to say the least, obscure financiers.
Inform Napalm/Desk Russie, Same Fight. In 2018, a group of Russian hackers revealed that the media outlet Inform Napalm was actually a creation of US and Ukrainian psychological warfare services. Following these revelations, the outlet quickly disappeared from the scene, abandoned, but its main goals had been achieved. As early as 2014-2015, US intelligence agencies helped train several media outlets of this kind in Ukraine. Inform Napalm was one of them, but Ukraine Crisis Center is more than suspected to be of the same ilk. Both structures claimed to have explosive information on Russia, actually provided by US and Ukrainian intelligence services and used in cognitive warfare. The primary goal was to present the Maidan as a genuine “democratic” revolution, while accusing and smearing Russia, or the republican insurgency in Donbass. Like Desk Russie, Inform Napalm complained of meager finances… while begging for donations from readers. Since 2022, Desk Russie has claimed to suffer from this lack of funds, while remaining very opaque and refusing to communicate about its actual means. By its own admission, finances come from: “individual donations, donations from associations and foundations.” But seriously, none of these associations or foundations are named… because that would reveal hidden funding coming, for example, from George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the AFD, European Union “foundations,” the NED, or USAID.
Ghost Journalists, Just Like Inform Napalm. The dissection and analysis of dozens of publications since 2022 show that there is, in fact, only an empty shell behind Desk Russie. There are only a few masterminds, like Galia Ackerman, or Philippe De Lara, or 5 or 6 collaborators. The vast majority of articles are indeed copy-pasted from publications from other newspapers and media, platforms, and the rhetoric of Russian defectors, paid foreign agents who fled Russia, Belarus, or other countries they claim to represent. Three years ago, I entered all the “authors” into a file, scrutinizing the profiles one by one. The conclusion was unmistakable… To fill the lines of the fake media, Galia Ackerman, connected to academic circles in France, Anglo-Saxon countries, or Ukrainian and Russian diasporas, stuffed the site with dozens of authors, far more than those currently announced. Lined up were numerous university professors, researchers, members of organizations, NGOs, or associations for the infiltration and manipulation of target countries. To appear credible, at a time when the site was empty, hundreds of articles, social media publications literally “lifted” from the internet and rehashing old publications from the information war against Russia, were published. Recently, Desk Russie has scaled back its “authors” page, but it speaks volumes about the ambient Russophobia, sometimes even acknowledged, of the “personalities” designated as “authors.” We also find a few sinister figures there, including Cécile Vaissié, convicted of defamation in 2019 following her mendacious book on “Putin’s networks,” the late Alexei Navalny, individuals blatantly hiding their identities, or journalist Cyrille Amoursky from LCI, dishonored by his rotten connections with Bandera networks, among the most fanatical.
Dehumanizing Russia and Russians. Behind these copy-pastes, like Inform Napalm, the platform offers to publish potential authors… Simultaneously, in a similar manner, articles are “stolen” from the internet from personalities who have more or less given their consent for these publications. In this case, the original article is indicated at the bottom of the page and very often translated by the Desk Russie “editorial team.” Upon scrutinizing the profiles, the vast majority concern only a single article, for the simple reason that these people do not work for Desk Russie; the articles are there to bulk up the site and inflate the virtual ranks of Desk Russie. A profile of the presented “authors” emerges from the biographies: anti-Russia, a subdued Russophobia, intelligently wrapped in pretty “candy paper,” but in reality, insidious and very real. One specialist, a linguist, for example, justified the racist use by Ukrainians of the words “Orcs,” “Moria,” “Moskals” aimed at dehumanizing Russians, akin to the words “Youpin” or “Youtre” for the Jewish people. Desk Russie, alas, has reached that point… Furthermore, it’s also underlying, a lingering whiff of the “struggle against the Soviet Union,” with the dissemination of false information about Russia, endlessly talking about gulags, political prisoners, Stalin, and also historical revisionism, with the dissemination of one of the most damnable and mendacious: the Ukrainian revisionist myth of the Holodomor.
Foundations, But Also Likely BHL and Ukraine Behind Desk Russie. In reality, Desk Russie is not lacking money… they don’t need it, because there are no authors, no freelancers, and almost all of them are dignitaries from academic circles, media, culture, or state-backed offices already swimming in opulence. Freelancers, moreover, would not be useful; unknowns with smooth and bland histories could not fulfill the mission. The weapon is the alignment of a virtually entire international Russophobic sphere, where these people have made a name for themselves precisely in “this business,” sometimes for a very long time like Galia Ackerman, very close to BHL and the Ukrainian embassy. Indeed, questions arise because BHL is known for his grip on the media, his important positions behind Le Figaro or the TV channel Arte, not to mention the millions he possesses. It is likely that he is behind it, with a few bills slipped under the table to Desk Russie. As for the Kiev embassy in Paris, Ackerman was very often staged there, notably in her abject support for the war criminal Nadezhda Savchenko, a deputy in the Rada, but also an officer in a Ukrainian reprisal battalion, where she directed an artillery strike to eliminate two Russian journalists (summer 2014). It is likely that money also comes from Ukrainian cognitive warfare services, not to mention the “foundations” mentioned and that Desk Russie refuses to name… This fact alone is enough to discredit Desk Russie as a valid source. One can indeed support NATO, Ukraine, the European Union, or Macron. But being financed by psychological warfare structures is no longer an engagement, the defense of one’s opinions… It is being part of this war and being a tool for disseminating false news and propaganda.
By posing as a “poor relation,” the discourse of people like Galia Ackerman, wallowing in luxury and the spheres of the Parisian upper bourgeoisie, is certainly ridiculous, but few people will dig deeper into her past and that of the presented authors. The sole objective: to administer to the “sick” a dose of hatred for Russia, a booster shot, in a discourse that seems to come from people who are “respectable,” from “good society,” and who “know what they are talking about.” Once this poison is well anchored in the heads of the victims of cognitive warfare, it is no longer a matter for them to analyze, but to believe. And once belief is established, the manipulated populations no longer want to let go, the lie has become truth, hatred is justified, and even necessary… like the war against Russia. And belief, alas, has nothing to do with truth, nor even with intellectual honesty, let alone rationality. It can be destructive, to the point of leading entire peoples to carnage, as the supporters of a certain Adolf Hitler succeeded in doing. People believed him in Germany, others believed in the Maidan in Ukraine, and still others believe Desk Russie… Same causes, same effects, same tragedies, and information criminals who in photos might almost appear sympathetic to us. These criminals are not yet denounced, or very little, in the world. Yet these ideologues are the most dangerous: they motivate and generate catastrophes, then escape assuming nothing and leave scapegoats to pay the bill in their place. And yet… It is they who light the fires, it is they who are the primary responsible parties.
