Thread by @DucuGavril

🧵 What SDA Actually Tries to Do: The Strategic Goals Behind the Noise

#DeceptionByDesign4

Beyond Operation Doppelgänger (Pamment & Tsurtsumia, 2025)
mpf.se/psychological-…

SDA doesn’t push random content.

Its campaigns have clear strategic aims—shaped by client goals, audience vulnerabilities, and geopolitical context.

Here’s what their storytelling actually targets.

#DeceptionByDesign4

SDA’s narrative strategy isn’t ideological.

It’s instrumental.

Its goals shift based on what weakens its adversary the most.

The objectives?

Sow division
Erode trust
Undermine institutions
Fracture alliances
Push disengagement

Target 1: NATO and the EU

Campaigns focus on:

– Painting NATO as aggressor
– Highlighting “Western hypocrisy”
– Amplifying narratives of internal EU decay
– Suggesting abandonment of Eastern members

Tactic: Dissonance through plausible critique

Target 2: Ukraine

Key themes include:

– “Ukraine fatigue” in the West
– Corruption allegations
– Framing Ukrainian resistance as extremist
– Pushing peace through surrender narratives

Tactic: Emotional exhaustion, not argument

#DeceptionByDesign4

Target 3: Domestic trust in institutions

SDA works to degrade confidence in:

– Elections
– Public health
– Media credibility
– Judiciary independence

Method: small distortions, emotional framing, volume over evidence

Target 4: Social cohesion

Many campaigns don’t aim to promote Russia.

They aim to amplify internal fractures:

– Migration tensions
– Religious or linguistic division
– Urban–rural resentment
– Cultural identity anxiety

The point is to turn civic cracks into political rifts.

SDA’s content often avoids direct lies.

Instead, it piles on contradictory, demoralizing, or cynical takes until nothing feels trustworthy.

Goal: confusion > conviction
Civic withdrawal > opposition

#DeceptionByDesign4

The strategy isn’t to persuade.

It’s to pollute.

To make shared understanding feel impossible.

To make withdrawal from democratic life seem safer than participation.

It’s disinformation through disengagement.

Source:
Pamment & Tsurtsumia (2025) - Beyond Operation Doppelgänger



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