Mysterious pro-Western social media accounts target Russian influence in Sahel with deceptive tactics

A network of anonymous social media accounts, mainly in French on X, Facebook and TikTok, has since mid-2025 been undermining ruling juntas in Africa's Sahel region and denouncing Russia using tactics copied from Russian propaganda, according to an investigation by Radio France Internationale and France24.

The accounts attack junta leaders as violent and incompetent, denounce Russia, and make favorable references to the European Union, France and the U.S. They use AI to create false versions of local news reports and put fake headlines on counterfeit versions of Russian sites. The accounts link to and recommend each other — a tactic Russia also uses to boost apparent popularity and search-engine rankings.

Account names include La Dépêche Africaine (“African Dispatch”), Scoop Africa, InfoCivik Togo and Lomé Poadcast, according to the investigation published in March.

False content identified by the investigation included a supposed AI-generated Burkina Faso television report saying the country was sending troops to fight for Iran; a fake screengrab from Russian Sputnik News saying Russians were urged to leave Mali due to an imminent jihadist threat; and a doctored Burkina Faso television clip saying the country was selling an electrical power plant to Russia.

Other posts from the accounts, beyond those in the French investigation, claimed Burkina Faso had agreed to send two-thirds of its gold production to a Moscow bank, and that the Russian army had opened a recruiting office in Burkina Faso. Those posts were accompanied by purported video from Russian television network RT and a screengrab from the Sputnik website, but neither story appeared to exist on the actual sites of the two Russian outlets. Another post claimed to show a Burkina Faso recruit forced onto a battlefield in Ukraine with a mine strapped to his chest.

France has previously run clandestine social media accounts in Africa, and the new ones align with French geopolitical interests. Asked about the sites, a French foreign ministry spokesperson declined to comment. In 2025, France established French Response, an often-snarky account on X that counters critics of France.

Thomas Kent, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council who teaches at Columbia University and is a consultant on propaganda issues and Russian affairs, said the covert ecosystem raises questions about ethics and effectiveness. While Western nations including the U.S. have deployed false internet accounts on multiple occasions, large-scale use of deceit to fight deceit threatens the overall information environment, he said.