the BBC report –

Moscow’s “little hand” behind the misinformation about Kate Middleton. According to the BBC, what fueled the conspiracy machine made up of fake news and speculation that affected the Princess of Wales from the abdominal operation up to the video in which she announced that she had a tumor, passing through the case of the retouched photo, was a group linked to Russian disinformation campaigns on the web. The British public service cites security experts who speak of a coordinated campaign, with many accounts involved also spreading content against French support for Ukraine.

Martin Innes, director of the Institute on Security, Crime and Innovation in Intelligence at Cardiff University, has detected systematic attempts to amplify the wave of messages – also generated and relaunched by normal social media users – by a Russian disinformation group well identified. A group that, in addition to messages about Kate, conducts campaigns “to attack the reputation of France, promote the integration of Russian elections and denigrate Ukraine”.

The “smoking gun” discovered by the team of experts is the network of fake accounts that operated to simultaneously share some content, an activity that generated suspicious peaks. Many of the profiles spreading false theories about Kate were created in March. And they fed a “master” account, to which a cascade of other profiles responded, ready to share her posts. Identical phrases, such as “Why do these big media want us to believe that these are Kate and William?”, commenting on the video in which the two Princes of Wales were caught doing the shopping, were posted simultaneously by multiple accounts. Another comment about Kate was shared at the same time by 365 different profiles on X. Even on Tik Tok, many accounts active in spreading royal rumors had just been created. Rumors about the death of King Charles III had recently spread on Russian media and social media, with the British embassies in Russia and Ukraine having to deny the rumours.