A leak of documents and correspondence from Russian officials reveals a series of influence campaigns  carried out by Moscow against Western states, including Israel. The documents show that the Russians orchestrated and funded antisemitic and anti-Islamic incidents in Paris, with the goal of creating political chaos and undermining the standing of the French president. The documents also reveal that Moscow considered setting up a fake Think Tank in Haifa in order to disseminate the Russian narrative across the world. Additional documents expose that the Russians tried to influence the outcome of elections in Armenia, scheduled to be held in early June, just as they tried to sway the result of the Hungarian election some two months ago.

Most of the documents in question are the correspondence of Sofia Zakharova, a senior official in the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zakharova’s name appears on the sanctions list of several countries. Officially, her role is described as “Department head in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies and Communications Infrastructure.” Among the leaked documents is correspondence between Zakharova and a Moscow-based company called the Social Design Agency (SDA), which appears to be the central player in Russia’s global psychological operations. In September 2024, an international investigation – in which Shomrim was the Israeli representative – uncovered efforts by the SDA and the Russian regime to influence events in several different countries. Among the revelations in that investigation were Russian efforts to deepen the polarization in Israeli society by establishing a new party appealing to immigrants from the former Soviet Union and by fomenting civil unrest among Israel’s Arab population.

The leaked documents were obtained by the Delfi Estonia news website, which shared them with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and other media outlets across the world. Shomrim is the Israeli representative in this project. It is worth noting that the leak also contains documents from the recent past, including those relating to the war in Iran.

The Kremlin’s psyop division

The Social Design Agency was founded in 2017 by Ilya Gambashidze, a sociologist by training. It has a wealth of experience managing political campaigns, public relations campaigns and psychological operations designed to manipulate how a target audience perceives reality. According to its internal documents, it has been involved in more than 200 such projects in less than a decade, including elections in Russia and campaigns for massive Russian companies like Gazprom Neft. At the same time, SDA also operates a huge media conglomerate known as SNG Media, which owns a network of news websites and radio stations mainly targeting the former Soviet republics. However, behind the polished façade of a media conglomerate there is a sophisticated mechanism of psychological operations which acts as a de facto branch of the Kremlin. According to the U.S. State Department, which has imposed sanctions on the company, Gambashidze is run directly by Sergey Kiriyenko, a senior member of Putin’s inner circle and a former prime minister of Russia. Historical FBI reports indicate that the company was responsible for Doppelgänger attacks, whereby duplicate fake versions of well-known Western news websites publish disinformation, and that it systematically monitored the online activity of more than 2,800 individuals from 81 different countries, whom it had identified as influential.

The company’s own documents show that its officials boasted about using technological tools that guarantee complete “anonymity,” while recommending that traditional, overt pro-Russian propaganda be abandoned in favor of “inflicting cognitive blows” on Western target audiences by exploiting internal social divisions without the public’s knowledge.

Among the new cache of leaked documents is a detailed proposal to establish a research institute in Israel. According to the correspondence, the SDA recognized that the propaganda they distribute lacks a “legitimate information source” and a “journalistic pretext,” both of which are required to successfully penetrate news media and influence opinion leaders. The solution they came up with was to set up a new research institute in Israel, which would be established and operated by Israeli citizens with academic degrees in politics, sociology, economics and philosophy. The institute, according to the correspondence, would publish dozens of papers, studies and videos every month that would, in practice, advance the Russian narrative and would provide a “reputable source” to be quoted in the Israeli and global media. According to the budgetary calculation cited in the leaked correspondence, the first six months of the project would cost around 8.8 million rubles (around $125,000). This budget included, among other things, renting offices in Haifa, the legal registration of the institute, purchasing equipment and salaries for three Israeli founders. Additionally, approximately 3 million rubles were earmarked each month for content creation and promotion. There is no indication in the documents that the institute was ultimately established.

In a separate correspondence, an official from the president’s office describes her efforts to have articles written by former U.S. General Paul Vallely – who is identified with the American right – published by Israeli news outlets. “Preliminary agreements have been reached with major Israeli media outlets that Vallely will publish ‘his’ experts with them. We are currently preparing a letter from Vallely’s organization (Stand Up [America] U.S. Foundation) to the media and working through the financial aspect. The probability of success is 90 percent,” she wrote. “Important: Vallely is close to Trump and is perceived accordingly,” she added.

In a conversation with OCCRP, Vallely said that he writes for and is interviewed by many media outlets and that he does not remember an Israeli media outlet being among them. He added that he has no formal public relations ties to the Russians. “I wouldn’t do anything like that,” he said.

The leaked documents also reveal that Russian psyops were not limited to the online world or to fictitious research institutes and that the organization planned and executed physical operations and provocations across Europe. One of them – referred to in the documents as “Green Synagogues” – was carried out in Paris in May last year and attempted to simulate a wave of Islamist antisemitism in the city. Unknown individuals described as having “an Arab appearance” were hired to daub green paint on the front of synagogues, a kosher restaurant and the Paris Holocaust museum. 

The internal report proudly boasts that the goal was to embarrass French authorities over their inability to protect the country’s Jewish community and to undermine the reputation of President Emmanuel Macron – “who allowed himself to criticize Israel.” The campaign was reported in the international media and widely condemned. “I am deeply disgusted by these heinous acts targeting the Jewish community,” French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau posted at the time on social media, while Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said, “I condemn these acts of intimidation in the strongest possible terms. Antisemitism has no place in our city or in our republic.”

Pig head attacks on mosques and graffiti

Attacks on Jewish targets were just part of the activity initiated by the mechanism that the SDA set up and which was revealed in the leak. For example, in September 2025, the agency hired individuals to throw pigs’ heads with the name of the French president written on them at the entrance of mosques across Paris – with the goal of enraging the French public and creating societal chaos. Other operations included spraying pro-Ukrainian slogans on a statue of Charles de Gaulle in Paris and launching sex dolls into the Seine River carrying the message “Fuck migrants!” Another planned activity was based on a prior act of vandalism carried out by the Russians in Germany, which aimed to damage the image of the Green Party. In that instance, car exhaust pipes were filled with expanding foam and affixed with stickers reading “Be Greener!”

The agency also initiated and disseminated fake news targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (alleging that he had purchased a luxury apartment in Dubai for $3.2 million) and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (accusing him of purchasing a 3.1 million euro villa in Marseille). Ahead of the elections in Armenia, which are now just a few weeks away, the agency began spreading messaging against the current regime and in favor of the pro-Russian opposition. According to the leak, this disinformation is also being spread on fake news platforms set up by the SDA itself. Another document shows how Russia planned to intervene in elections in Hungary and Slovenia, both of which were held in April. At the same time, the agency launched a new project called Mitteleuropa, which was designed to influence decision-makers in Austria, Hungary and Slovakia by encouraging conservative and anti-Western sentiment.

According to the leaked documents, the SDA also planned AI-based propaganda campaigns to create independent, pro-Russian content in German and Armenian. According to other documents, it used technology to engineer search engine results to ensure that the materials it distributed would appear at the top of search rankings. Another plan involved developing a network of “news” sites for former Soviet states, along with a project generating dozens of satirical news videos presented by AI characters, designed for viral distribution on French social networks.

OCCRP, on behalf of the media organizations which participated in the investigation, asked Zakharova, the SDA and Putin’s office for a response. None of them replied.