---
title: Russia Social Design Agency — Projects 2026
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/sda-projects-2026/
description: European public discourse and elections (France, Germany, Armenia, others); search indices and LLM retrieval; secondary Western citation ecosystems
section: Campaign dossiers
---

![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg)

[Campaigns](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/)

# Russia Social Design Agency — Projects 2026

[![First page of the affidavit in support of a seizure warrant for 32 internet domains, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, case 24-mj-1395, with the affiant's name redacted](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-intro-page-1-2024.png)](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-intro-page-1-2024.png)

First page of the affidavit in support of a seizure warrant for 32 internet domains, U.S. District Court,...

[![Page 11 of the same affidavit, quoting the US Treasury's descriptions of Sergei Kiriyenko and the 2021 Executive Order 14024 sanctions framework](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-ofac-kiriyenko-page-11-2024.png)](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-ofac-kiriyenko-page-11-2024.png)

Page 11 of the same affidavit, quoting the US Treasury's descriptions of Sergei Kiriyenko and the 2021...

[![Page 22 of the same affidavit, in which the affiant summarises notes of meetings recorded by SDA's founder and assesses that “SVK” refers to Kiriyenko](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-strategy-meeting-notes-page-22-2024.png)](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-strategy-meeting-notes-page-22-2024.png)

Page 22 of the same affidavit, in which the affiant summarises notes of meetings recorded by SDA's founder...

- **Actor:** Social Design Agency (SDA / Agentstvo Sotsialnogo Proektirovaniya), Kremlin-linked contractor; coordination with the Russian Presidential Administration (open-source: OCCRP, Bloomberg; US/UK/EU sanctions)
- **Target:** European public discourse and elections (France, Germany, Armenia, others); search indices and LLM retrieval; secondary Western citation ecosystems
- **Source:** Unidentified gray to black (front institutes and clones; contractor-to-state link evidenced in leaked chats, not on the public sites)
- **Techniques:** [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/) [Corpus poisoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/corpus-poisoning/) [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Manufactured consensus](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/manufactured-consensus/) [Flooding the zone](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/flooding-the-zone/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/)
- **First seen:** May 2026 document leak (Delfi Estonia / OCCRP); Bloomberg 23 Jun 2026; Cipher Brief analysis 10 Sep 2026
- **Status:** active as of September 10, 2026 (hosts have suspended some clones; residual index and plans remain)
- **Related briefs:** [Leaked Social Design Agency documents and September analysis detail Project 2026 plans to seed AI, search engines and European discourse via fictitious think tanks, Wikipedia-style sites and opinion-leader profiling](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260910-1515Z-russia-sda-projects-2026-ai-laundering/)

## Mechanism

Leaked SDA files describe “Projects 2026” as an attempt to own the *reference layer* — Wikipedia-style sites, a German “self-filling knowledge base” claimed at 200,000+ pages, unsigned analysis from entities such as the World Center for Strategic Studies (registered March 2026), and an “AI News” line of 500+ short videos for French audiences across six platforms. Parallel tasking: a database of 10,000 European opinion leaders, with 100 top French opposition figures named as a priority.

![First page of the affidavit in support of a seizure warrant for 32 internet domains, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, case 24-mj-1395, with the affiant's name redacted](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-intro-page-1-2024.png)

*4 September 2024. First page of the affidavit supporting the seizure of 32 domains tied to the “Doppelganger” campaign (E.D. Pa., No. 2:24-mj-1395, Doc. 4, 277 pages), naming SDA, Structura and ANO Dialog and the Presidential Administration. This is court-record context for SDA's earlier, sanctioned work, not the 2026 leak; the affiant's claims are allegations in a warrant application. Source: U.S. Department of Justice, public domain (US federal government work).*

Narrative laundering is the institutional costume. Corpus poisoning is the computational goal: once a fake institute is indexed and quoted, large language models and search engines treat it as a source. Flooding-the-zone and synthetic media lower the cost of statistical weight. Card-stacking is in the historical and political framings (anti-Western, pro-Russian sovereignty, contested election claims).

OCCRP reporting documents coordination with Presidential Administration figures (including Sofia Zakharova under alias and references to Sergei Kiriyenko) on digital and offline “cognitive strikes,” which OCCRP reports included Islamophobic pig-head attacks in Paris. The firm was already under US, UK, and EU sanctions. Cipher Brief’s 10 September 2026 essay places the plans next to Chinese profiling shops and Iranian AI-content operations as a shared authoritarian retrieval playbook. Shared playbook is a method observation, not a conspiracy of three capitals unless separately evidenced.

![Page 11 of the same affidavit, quoting the US Treasury's descriptions of Sergei Kiriyenko and the 2021 Executive Order 14024 sanctions framework](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-ofac-kiriyenko-page-11-2024.png)

*Page 11 of the same affidavit, setting out the OFAC designations of Sergei Kiriyenko (including the 22 February 2022 action under E.O. 14024) and the sanctions framework the warrant relies on. Source: U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. District Court, E.D. Pa., filed 4 September 2024, public domain.*

![Page 22 of the same affidavit, in which the affiant summarises notes of meetings recorded by SDA's founder and assesses that “SVK” refers to Kiriyenko](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/images/sda-projects-2026-affidavit-strategy-meeting-notes-page-22-2024.png)

*Page 22 of the same affidavit, in which the government affiant summarises meeting notes attributed to SDA's Ilya Gambashidze from 2022 and states its assessment of who the initials refer to. These are the affiant's assessments of seized documents, not findings of a court. Source: U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. District Court, E.D. Pa., filed 4 September 2024, public domain.*

## Evidence

- OCCRP, 24 May 2026, “Leaked Documents Reveal Russian ‘Cognitive Strikes’ Against the West” — https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/leaked-documents-reveal-russian-cognitive-strikes-against-the-west-including-islamophobic-pig-head-attacks-in-paris
- Bloomberg, 23 Jun 2026, leaked files on influencing AI and search / “Wiki Warfare” — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-23/leaked-files-show-russia-s-plan-to-influence-ai-and-search-results
- Cipher Brief, 10 Sep 2026, “Russia’s AI Blueprint Exposes an Authoritarian Playbook” — https://www.thecipherbrief.com/russias-ai-blueprint-exposes-an-authoritarian-playbook
- OpenSanctions on SDA — https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/NK-d3FQdNM59TvJzyw2UsBJKE/

## What would falsify this read

A showing that the leaked files are inauthentic; that the named institutes have independent staff and funding unrelated to SDA; or that host/platform suspensions removed the residual index. “Russia does this, therefore every new think tank is SDA” is not a valid inference.

## Literacy counter

Newly appearing high-volume institutes, Wikipedia clones, or unsigned analytical sites without named scholars, a physical footprint, or a funding trail are provisional — whether the suspected flag is Russian, Israeli, American, or Chinese. Demand provenance. Ask chatbots for source lists. Down-weight citation clusters that appeared in the same quarter as an election.