Poster boy: Six instances of Kremlin disinformation amplified through Elon Musk’s social network

Since Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022, the platform has been flooded with bots posting fake news, including AI-generated content, much of it originating from the Kremlin. In recent years, Musk’s rhetoric has increasingly echoed Russian propaganda, and he has actively amplified Kremlin-backed falsehoods to his vast audience — something that has not gone unnoticed in Moscow. Here are some of the most striking examples.

For years, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been a central figure in Kremlin propaganda, both on state-run TV channels and through bot networks on X (formerly Twitter) controlled by Russian authorities. In the fall of 2023, these propaganda efforts focused on Zelensky’s visit to the U.S., where the leader of the nation under Russian attack secured large-scale military and financial aid. In response, Kremlin propaganda launched a campaign portraying Zelensky as a “beggar” desperately pleading for “handouts” from Washington. The campaign involved trolls, propagandists, and even diplomats.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was established by presidential decree on Jan. 20, 2025. The department is not a part of the US government. Despite Donald Trump declaring Elon Musk as the person “leading” the “department,” the White House refuses to answer who is officially in charge of the new entity. In court, a White House representative stated that Musk is not a DOGE employee, but rather works for the White House. According to ProPublica’s calculations, DOGE received approximately $40 million from the Trump administration in its first month of existence. Lawyers argue that if DOGE is not a federal agency, such funding is illegal.

Adopted on Jan. 1, 2018, this law involved providing both companies and households with additional tax deductions, as well as the largest reduction in tax rates in the country’s history for almost all categories of citizens (the poorest excluded), as well as for corporations. As a result, taxes for Americans with the highest incomes significantly decreased, while for some of the least well-off Americans and citizens with middle incomes, they increased. Researchers from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute calculated that over the ten years following the adoption of the law, the budget revenue lost due to its passage will amount to $1.456 trillion. At the same time, politicians who supported the bill assumed that it would at least not cause budget losses, and might even generate revenue. It was expected that tax reductions would stimulate companies to invest more. As calculated by researchers from Harvard and Princeton, the growth in investment volume indeed amounted to 8% to 14%, but this was less than predicted. Wages after the adoption of the law increased by an average of $750 per year, while supporters of the law promised amounts from $4000 to $9000.

On Oct. 2, 2023, Elon Musk posted an image featuring a well-known meme of a man with a strained expression, edited to include Zelensky’s face. In the version spread by Musk, it bore the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”

The Kremlin was thrilled with this success. Investigative outlet Dossier obtained the minutes of a weekly meeting at the Russian Presidential Administration, attended by contractors from the Agency for Social Engineering. Held three days after Musk’s tweet went live, the meeting’s minutes included a note stating: “Musk’s meme — made by Sofia. Fake.” Sofia Zakharova, a referent at the Directorate for Information and Communication Technologies within the Presidential Administrative Directorate, oversees contractors from the Agency for Social Engineering, which is led by Ilya Gambashidze. The agency runs the new “troll factory,” which replaced the now-defunct network run by the late Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The Russian Presidential Administration’s efforts to push disinformation on this topic continued. However, after failing to secure another retweet from Musk, they simply fabricated one, launching a campaign featuring a fake Musk retweet.

Russian media and Kremlin-backed “political analysts” have been calling Zelensky a dictator since 2019, with the accusations intensifying after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion — a development that made it all but impossible for Ukraine to hold regularly scheduled elections. Canceling elections amid active military conflict is standard global practice, yet Russian propaganda seized on this widely accepted decision by the authorities in Kyiv as a pretext to claim Zelensky’s illegitimacy. The narrative of “Zelensky’s dictatorship” thus became a staple of propaganda TV broadcasts.

Following Russia’s lead, this argument was soon echoed by Republicans in the U.S. — from TV propagandist Tucker Carlson and conspiracy theorist Tulsi Gabbard (who later became Director of National Intelligence) to President Donald Trump (who later claimed he “couldn’t believe he had called Zelensky a dictator”).

Elon Musk also joined in, tweeting on Feb. 19: “Zelensky cannot claim to represent the will of the people of Ukraine until he restores freedom of the press and stops canceling elections!” The tech billionaire himself later went on to call Zelensky a dictator.

The U.S. national debt has long been a favorite topic for Russian state TV propagandists — and for Vladimir Putin himself. He claims the issue is being “covered up” (which is, of course, untrue) or that the debt is backed by nothing but trust. Russian propaganda channels have spent years counting down to an imminent U.S. default, and Vladimir Solovyov’s broadcasts routinely discuss how the American national debt is supposedly undermining the entire global economy. The tradition of predicting a U.S. default dates back to Soviet times, and despite Russia itself having gone through a default and multiple financial crises since then, these predictions about the American system continue with remarkable regularity.

The U.S. national debt is indeed a topic of discussion among economists and politicians, even if there is still no real threat of imminent default and despite the fact that the issue is of secondary political importance. However, after Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk suddenly began speaking out about the national debt and budget deficit in his role as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a quasi-official entity that was created specifically for him. Musk stated that tackling the national debt — something Russian propagandists have harped on for years — was his top priority. To that end, he has significantly cut funding for scientific programs, shutting some of them down entirely, while laying off employees of foreign aid and democracy promotion institutions that had operated in the U.S. for decades. He has declared the budgets of most federal agencies and departments to be “wasteful” spending.

As The Insider has reported, Russian media’s fearmongering over the U.S. national debt became far more prevalent after the invasion of Ukraine. Musk himself, however, had not publicly addressed the issue — or many others — until late 2024. Now, a substantial portion of his posts on X are dedicated to the national debt. Since the start of 2025, he has written about it at least 140 times — more than he did in the entire previous year (and before that, the topic had never featured in his social media output.)

Musk has written that “having [a] world war level of national debt without fighting a world war is catastrophic [for the country]” and has vowed that the DOGE team will fight against what he calls “insane levels of waste and fraud.”

The first reports on DOGE’s results were published on Feb. 18 (the department had promised to release them by February 14 but missed the deadline). In 40% of the contracts canceled by Musk’s agency, the budgetary savings amounted to precisely $0, while the overall savings figures were significantly inflated. The DOGE website initially claimed $55 billion in costs cut, but this number was later quietly revised down to $15 billion. In many cases, the reported figures remain inaccurate — for example, because the official analysis failed to account for services that had already been rendered and paid for, or because it listed the original contract amount without acknowledging that this figure had later been reduced.

In 40% of the contracts canceled by Musk’s agency, the budgetary savings amounted to precisely $0.

Trump had promised to reduce the national debt during his first term. However, as calculated by ProPublica, the debt actually increased by $8.4 trillion over his first four years in the Oval Office — not primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but largely because of the first Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The conspiracy theory that U.S. elections are rigged via the use of electronic voting machines emerged after Trump’s 2020 defeat and was repeatedly debunked through official and journalistic investigations (Fox News even had to pay over $700 million in settlement fees for spreading false claims on the topic). By 2024, it seemed this narrative had been largely forgotten, but as the new election cycle approached, Russian propaganda revived it. Not only did TV propagandists promote the theory that U.S. vote counts were unreliable, but Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova even made a post about the supposed horrors of “voting machines.”

Starting in mid-2024 and continuing through the election in November, Musk actively pushed this old conspiracy theory — right alongside Russian propagandists. Thanks to the algorithms of X, which Musk has owned since 2022, his claims that electronic voting was untrustworthy reached hundreds of millions of people.

Additionally, since late 2023, Musk has been spreading another conspiracy theory: that illegal immigrants were voting in U.S. elections and that they would inevitably side against the Republican Party. According to Musk, a member of Congress told him that undocumented immigrants were “deliberately being imported as future left-wing voters.” He claimed mail-in ballots were being used to facilitate this process.

According to The Insider's analysis, Musk has mentioned these two conspiracy theories in his posts on X at least 400 times since January 2024. Despite their prior existence, he had shown no interest in them before the end of 2023.

Russian propagandists eagerly picked up on Musk’s claims. Reports about remote voting in the U.S. aired on Russia 24, where Musk was quoted as an expert. Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov spoke about election fraud involving migrants. NTV asserted that Kamala Harris could only win if she were to receive help from illegal immigrants. One segment, titled A Chorus of Fake Votes, even cited Musk as an expert on U.S. election law.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) estimated that misleading election-related posts by Musk on X were viewed at least 1.2 billion times. Meanwhile, all of Musk’s election-related posts since the beginning of 2024 amassed at least 7.3 billion views, over 47 million likes, and 2.8 million replies, according to The Insider’s calculations.

For several years, Russian propaganda has repeatedly pushed the false claim that the COVID-19 virus was created using funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Russia’s Ministry of Defense has held multiple conferences on the topic and published numerous materials alleging that USAID funded the development of biological weapons — particularly in Ukraine.

In August 2022, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, claimed: “We are considering the possibility that USAID was involved in the emergence of the new coronavirus. Since 2009, the agency has funded the 'PREDICT' program, which studied new types of coronaviruses and involved capturing bats, known carriers of these viruses. One of the project’s contractors was Metabiota, a company known for its military-biological activities in Ukraine… The way the COVID-19 scenario unfolded and USAID’s abrupt termination of the 'PREDICT' program in 2019 suggest that the pandemic was intentional and that the U.S. was involved in its emergence.”

When Russia’s Foreign Ministry summarized this “report” on Twitter, the account was blocked. The ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, called the platform’s actions censorship.

In February 2025, Elon Musk suddenly took an interest in the topic and declared war on USAID. He came across a mention of the “PREDICT” program on an anonymous X account that sells courses on making money through the platform and reposted its content, adding: “Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people?”

In February 2025, Elon Musk launched his crusade against USAID. Before that, he had never mentioned the agency in any context. The billionaire accused USAID of wasting taxpayer money, spreading “leftist propaganda,” and exerting political influence in various countries — roughly the same rhetoric Russian politicians, officials, and propagandists have used to describe the agency for the past decade.

In 2019, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated: “A voice from the past — the Cold War era — was heard in Washington when the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Mark Green, spoke… USAID is not aimed at fostering cooperation on the world stage; it is a tool of ideological struggle and propaganda.” In 2024, Russian lawmaker Andrei Lugovoy said on Vladimir Solovyov’s program: “About 100 media outlets operating in friendly republics have been identified as exclusively engaged in anti-Russian propaganda on behalf of the West to create centers of influence.” Lugovoy, who stands credibly accused of carrying out the 2006 polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, concluded that Russia should create its own agency to influence politics in other countries.

For Russian propaganda, the USAID logo became proof of “America’s destructive influence” in Ukraine. In February 2023, during a Vesti broadcast, a man introduced as a Russian National Guard officer displayed booklets printed with USAID’s support. He described publications about farming development as “propaganda literature aimed at inciting hatred against everything Russian.”

By 2024, Putin went so far as to accuse the U.S. of financing terrorists in the North Caucasus in the early 2000s. Notably, during the actual early 2000s, he never made such accusations and instead maintained outwardly friendly relations with the U.S. It is possible that Putin’s statements were a form of “projection,” given that under his leadership, Russia itself has indeed funded terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Shortly after Putin did so, Elon Musk also accused the U.S. of financing terrorism through USAID, citing as “proof” a photo of an ISIS fighter in a tent bearing the agency’s logo. The image of militants in a tent with a USAID logo has been circulated by American far-right bloggers since 2013, after conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck first published it. However, Beck’s own outlet, The Blaze, later reported that the photo was taken after ISIS fighters in Syria seized stockpiles of humanitarian aid and weapons that the U.S. had supplied to the Syrian opposition.

Musk has also been spreading a screenshot of a supposed financial table, which he claims shows that USAID transferred more than $164 million to “organizations linked to terrorists.” His social media post accompanying the photograph asked rhetorically: “As many people have said, why pay terrorist organizations and certain countries to hate us when they’re perfectly willing to do it for free?”

In reality, the majority of the funds listed in the table were allocated to the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), a charitable organization that holds one of the highest trust ratings among U.S. NGOs. The other organizations mentioned in the table also provide support to refugees, women, and people affected by armed conflicts — not to terrorists. Moreover, the $164 million sum does not come solely from USAID (but at this point, nitpicking over such details hardly matters).

Musk also lent a hand to the Russian network of disinformation channels, dubbed Matryoshka, which is linked to Russian intelligence services. He retweeted a video spreading the false claim that USAID paid celebrities to travel to Ukraine.

Thanks to Musk’s efforts, the video racked up tens of millions of views — a record for the Matryoshka campaign. In addition to Musk, anonymous far-right accounts that have gained traction on X in recent years also began amplifying the video and its claims.

You can download the dataset on which the analysis is based on here.

Poster boy: Six instances of Kremlin disinformation amplified through Elon Musk’s social network

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