Fake Walla pages, commissioned interviews with Israeli politicians, comments on behalf of fictional Israelis, and attempts to create a rift between Israel and Ukraine. All this is described in The Insider’s investigation published on October 22, 2026.
Author: Editorial Team of NANews
The authors of the material, Dada Lindell and Nikita Aronov, studied hacked correspondence and internal documents of the Russian Agency for Social Design (ASP).
This is a structure associated with political technologist Ilya Gambashidze. Journalists link its activities to Kremlin-organized information operations outside of Russia.
The full investigation by The Insider — “How the Kremlin Spreads Disinformation in Israel”.
We will recount only a few of the most illustrative episodes. The original contains many more documents, names, and details that deserve separate attention.
Fake Israeli news
The Russian Doppelganger campaign, whose name translates to “double,” used copies of real news sites.
In Israel, pages of Walla, N12, and Mako — well-known local news resources — were faked. The reader saw the familiar design of the publication but landed on a different internet address where a fabricated publication was posted.
One example is a fake Walla page attributing words to Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, about Ukrainian heroes as “executioners of the Jewish people.”
As early as July 2023, the Israeli publication Ynet reported warnings from cybersecurity experts about the Russian influence campaign.
How October 7 and the war in Ukraine were used
After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Russian organizers received a new topic for their operations.
The documents studied by The Insider discussed how to contrast US aid to Israel and Ukraine, provoke mutual irritation between the two societies, and exploit anti-Semitic sentiments.
In particular, it was proposed to spread claims about Western weapons from Ukraine reaching Hamas.
In April 2024, instructions were drawn up for generating comments on behalf of ordinary Israelis. For example, from a 38-year-old woman dissatisfied with military spending and government actions.
This was not about ordinary political discussion but specially prepared messages that were supposed to look like opinions of real citizens.
Real media and paid publications
Not everything was limited to fake sites.
The Insider examines the story of journalist Nik Kolyokhin, who published interviews with Israeli politicians and experts. As previously established by the Israeli publication “Ayn ha-Shviit” (The Seventh Eye), which investigates media work, the funding of the series of publications was non-transparent, and in the text versions of the interviews, the emphasis shifted towards theses favorable to Moscow.
An example is given of an interview with Knesset member Hanoch Milvitsky from Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. The publication emphasized the need not to interfere in Russia’s war against Ukraine, while criticism of Moscow’s relations with Hamas, which was voiced in the video recording, was not included in the text.
The investigation also details the use of organizations posing as independent think tanks, including the International Burke Institute.
How NANews ended up on the Russian list
There is also an unexpected detail for our editorial team in the investigation.
The Insider publishes a list of Russian-language Israeli media that ASP considered for placing publications, comments, and expert opinions.
First on this list is our site — NANews, nikk.agency. In the document, it is called “Israel News.”
We do indeed often receive offers to place articles. Mostly these are commercial publications, advertisements, PR materials, and guest texts. For an informational site, there is nothing unusual in such requests.
However, the editorial team has not received offers that we could associate with the described Russian operation. At least, we are not aware of such requests.
Why did we end up on this list? We don’t know.
Perhaps the compilers simply needed to present a larger list of potential platforms to their curators to make the report look more solid.
Or maybe they first added NANews to the list, then opened the site, read what and how we write about Russia, Ukraine, and Israel — and immediately followed the Russian warship.
Of course, this is just our assumption with a touch of editorial irony.
The authors of The Insider themselves emphasize: it is unknown how the list was used and whether the listed publications received money for publications. The mere presence of the site in the document does not prove cooperation with ASP.
What else is worth reading
The investigation has separate sections on working with Russian-speaking repatriates, Telegram channels, rabbis, experts, and politicians.
For the Israeli reader, it is especially interesting how Russian organizers tried to use existing social divisions, presenting their own messages as opinions of Israeli residents.
But we will not retell the entire investigation here. The journalists of The Insider did a great job, and it is much more useful to read it in full — with documents, quotes, and examples.
Read the original investigation by The Insider from October 22, 2026.