Ukraine-Russia war, latest news. OpenAI closes Russian ChatGPT accounts: ‘Used for pro-Moscow propaganda’
Overnight, Moscow struck four major Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro.
Key points
OpenAI has blocked a group of ChatGPT accounts originating from Russia which, according to the company, were being used to support a covert online influence campaign aimed at spreading disinformation. This was reported by CNBC. The company identified the issue after examining a number of social media posts generated by artificial intelligence; this analysis led to the discovery of a “much broader influence operation”, OpenAI said.
The campaign “centred on a website containing plagiarised academic work that portrayed Russia in a favourable light”. The website – as OpenAI notes in its report – is that of a self-styled “community of experts” called the International Burke Institute (IBI), which states on its portal that it is based in Israel. As of 17 July, the website “boasted a wide range of world-renowned experts, including prominent figures such as Francis Fukuyama and Noam Chomsky”. However, a sample analysis revealed that many articles had been copied from the internet, dated back several years or were attributed to the wrong authors.
Alongside these articles, the IBI website “included reports on various countries and their sovereignty”, focusing in particular on nations critical of the war in Ukraine, such as France, Germany and the EU, and adopting a critical and polemical tone. Some of these reports were presented as comparisons between two countries, as in the case of a piece that also mentions our country, entitled: ‘Slovakia versus Italia: the paradoxes of sovereignty in countries held hostage by the “Great” Union’.
This is just the latest instance of pro-Russian actors using AI to spread disinformation. OpenAI does not allow access to its models from Russia, but the company has reported that VPNs were used to mask the geographical location. In February, OpenAI announced the closure of ChatGPT accounts linked to Rybar, a pro-Russian media company described by the British government as “partially coordinated by the presidential administration”, funded by the Russian state-owned company Rostec and operating in collaboration with members of the Russian intelligence services.
US-Russia: media report that the CIA director’s plane is en route to Moscow
The Director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe (aged 60, in office until 23 January 2025), landed in Moscow on 25 August 2026 for a series of meetings with Russian officials, travelling on a Boeing C-17A military flight. The news was first reported by CBS News. The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, according to Bloomberg. It is unclear whether the meetings relate (in part) to US efforts to bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
