Putin 2024 Project

In 2024, Russia is under the spotlight in a series of high profile events which will give the Kremlin opportunities to assert its geopolitical messages. These events which are of political, economic, cultural and geopolitical natures will run all year long.

• January 2024: Russia takes the chairmanship of the BRICS
• 4 January – Russian President Vladimir Putin issues a decree granting Russian citizenship to foreigners who fight for Russia in the war against Ukraine. 
• 23 February 2024: Two years Russian invasion in a context Western support to Ukraine starts to be challenged
• 29 February-7 March 2024: World Youth Forum
• 15-17 March 2024: Russia’s presidential elections and likely re-election of Vladimir Putin
• 18 March 2024: 10 year anniversary Crimean annexion by Russia
• 5-8 June 2024: 27^th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum
• July 2024: neutral status of Russian athletes at Olympic Games
• 8 September 2024: Russian Elections
• 15-29 September 2024: World Friendship Games
• October 2024: 16th BRIC Summit hosted in Russia
• 4 November 2024: Russia’s day of Unity

They will create opportunities for Russia to launch information operation campaigns in order to support events and messages but also reach out Russia’s domestic and international target audiences. Most covert information operations have been organised through state actors like the Russian intelligence services (GRU, SVR and FSB) or private actors like the Wagner group’s influence desk. The Wagner Group has pioneered complex information operations for Russia from 2014 to 2023. Therefore Putin 2024 project will be a sub-project of the All Eyes On Wagner (AEOW) project which has worked extensively on influence campaigns and Russia’s power projection abroad. Putin 2024 project is part of the Wagner legacy work done by AEOW.

Our ambition is to detect, analyse and expose Russian information operations in 2024 and build a database available to everybody based on the DISARM framework.

The project will focus on three research areas:

• monitoring of the 2024 events
• information operation campaigns: messages, infrastructure, attribution and performance of each campaign
• people and structures behind Russian influence machine in 2024