Writers of the Storm: Who's Behind the Ongoing Production of Pro-Russian False Narratives

This report describes additional findings about a pro-Russian disinformation campaign first publicly identified by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub in December 2023[1] and subsequently dubbed Storm-1516 by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center.[2] This campaign has been ongoing since at least August 2023 and has met with several viral successes. In this report we will attempt to better understand who may be responsible for Storm-1516 and, perhaps more importantly, the distribution network driving the campaign’s virality. Storm-1516 is tightly connected to the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI). Their behavior is much too closely linked than would reasonably occur by accident or simple correlation in aims. The evidence for this tight connection comes in three forms, each of which will be discussed fully in the sections to come.