Russian AI Sites Can't Stop Gushing About Putin

[Celerity]

Kremlin propagandist and U.S. fugitive John Mark Dougan runs a large network of French sites that incessantly praise the Russian president

https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/russian-ai-sites-cant-stop-gushing



What happened: American fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist John Mark Dougan has long used his own generative AI server to flood the West with false claims planted on bogus news sites with names like DCWeekly.org and SteelCityDaily.com. But in his latest wave of French-language websites, Dougan has added a new, often comic element to his AI-generated articles: no matter what the subject, they just can’t stop praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Context: Dougan works from Moscow as part of a pro-Kremlin influence operation known as Storm-1516. Using a self-hosted and self-trained AI server reportedly based on Meta’s open source Llama model, he has become a potent source of false claims targeting Western democracies.

Dougan had been a deputy in the Sheriff’s Department in Palm Beach County, Florida, until 2016, when he fled to Russia and was granted asylum after facing charges in a computer hacking scheme.

A closer look: In September 2025, U.S. cybersecurity firm Recorded Future reported that Dougan appeared to be behind 141 new French-language fake news websites advancing Russian propaganda aimed at undermining French democracy. NewsGuard’s analysis of this network found that Dougan’s self-trained AI now litters the web with so much gratuitous praise of Putin that it’s as if Dougan earns a bonus for any mentions of the Russian President.

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