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EU Report: Russian Network Exploited French Riots OnlineWorld
A covert Russian network known as ‘Operation Overload’ used fake news videos and impersonated Western media to exploit France’s October riots, an internal EU assessment seen by Reuters says — though it found no evidence Moscow started the unrest.
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A covert Russian network known as “Operation Overload” used social media to exploit France’s riots last month, blaming the unrest on uncontrolled immigration and portraying the French government as having lost control, according to an internal European Union assessment seen by Reuters.
The assessment, prepared by disinformation experts in the EU’s diplomatic service and covering the period from October 7 to 21, found that the network spread videos impersonating Western media outlets to target French audiences. Some of the videos falsely claimed that migrants had raped protesters or that terrorist attacks were imminent, according to the assessment.
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The network has been active since September 2023, the EU analysis says, and has targeted Western public figures, institutions and media outlets to discredit them and their support for Ukraine, while promoting content aligned with Russian interests. Researchers who track the operation say it creates videos that appear to be news reports, uses artificial intelligence to clone experts’ voices, forges newspaper headlines and manipulates images, moving from country to country to exploit crises and debates as they arise.
Crucially, the EU document found no evidence that Moscow or any other foreign actor had started or escalated the protests, describing the activity instead as the “opportunistic exploitation of unrest”. Reuters said it was not able to independently verify the assertions made in the assessment. The Russian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A separate internal assessment, compiled by France’s foreign ministry and also seen by Reuters, found that social media accounts linked to Israel and to the US MAGA movement also pushed “hostile narratives” around the riots, linking them to radical Islamism and migration. According to the French report, the 10 most-viewed posts on X about the unrest by MAGA-linked officials, media outlets and influencers attracted more than 49 million views between October 16 and 18.
French officials referred Reuters to remarks by President Emmanuel Macron, who said on October 21 that there had been no visible foreign interference behind the protests, but that there had been “foreign manipulation of information”. France’s disinformation watchdog, Viginum, published a detailed report on Operation Overload and similar Russian operations in 2024, and French officials have said such efforts tend to resurface during protests, elections and other moments of tension.
The findings add to growing concern in Europe about foreign information operations. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has described the Russian network as the most active foreign disinformation network targeting the EU. The assessments underline how quickly unrest at home can become a target for outside actors seeking to deepen division — even when, as the EU report itself stresses, there is no evidence they caused the unrest in the first place.
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