* **Summary**: An influence operation may redirect its falsified or typosquatted URLs to legitimate websites to increase the operation's appearance of legitimacy, complicate attribution, and avoid detection.
| [I00072 Behind the Dutch Terror Threat Video: The St. Petersburg "Troll Factory" Connection](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00072.md) | <I>“The creator of Geopolitika[.]ru is Aleksandr Dugin, who was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury in 2015 for his role in the Eurasian Youth Union “for being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”<br><br> [...]<br><br> “Currently, the website geopolika[.]ru redirects directly to another partner website, Katehon.<br><br> “Katehon poses itself as a think tank focused on geopolitics in an English edition of its website. In contrast, in Russian, it states its aim to develop “ideological, political, diplomatic, economic and military strategy for Russia of the future” with a special role of religion. The president of Katehon’s supervisory board is Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian millionaire with connections to the Russian orthodox church and presidential administration, who founded Tsargrad TV, a known source of disinformation. Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the European Union in 2014 for material support and financial backing of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Another known figure from the board is Sergei Glaziev, former advisor to Putin in 2012–2019. Dugin is also on the board in the Russian edition of the website, whereas he is omitted in English.”</i><br><br> In this example a website managed by an actor previously sanctioned by the US department of treasury has been configured to redirect to another website; Katehon (T0129.008: Redirect URLs).<br><br> Katehon presents itself as a geopolitical think tank in English (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona), but does not maintain this persona when presenting itself to a Russian speaking audience. |
