Security forces in the North Caucasus have claimed that Western intelligence services were using AI-generated content to sow dissent in the region. They said they want to start searching the internet for the people behind the AI videos.
Authorities didn’t specify what the videos were or give any evidence for their existence. Russian authorities have repeatedly accused foreign actors of organising protests and disseminating critical material about the North Caucasus.
Chaika said Russia expects there to be a ‘sharp increase’ in the use of AI to mass-produce content on ‘sensitive issues for the North Caucasus’ and distribute it among residents of the region. The envoy claims that such content is intended, among other things, for ‘opposition-minded citizens’.
According to the Russian state news agency Interfax, Chaika claimed that ‘the main threat is shifting from funding formally established NGOs to supporting decentralised online communities and Western intelligence services directly engaging with opposition-minded citizens via the internet.’
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s North Caucasus representative, Yuri Chaika made the statement on Wednesday at a meeting chaired by Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council. The meeting focused on countering what the authorities describe as the destructive influence of foreign countries on Russian society, including through NGOs.
According to Chaika, cooperation has already been established across the North Caucasus between agencies monitoring youth communities, law enforcement bodies, and regional authorities. Regional management centres also monitor information threats and prepare content intended to mitigate their influence.
In recent years, Moscow has regularly accused the West of organising riots and demonstrations in Russia.
For example, in 2019, protests in Ingushetia against an agreement to alter the administrative border with Chechnya were described as the result of a ‘Western plot’. During anti-semitic riots at Daghestan’s Makhachkala airport in October 2023, the then-Head of Daghestan, Sergei Melikov, accused a pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel of organising the unrest. Putin also claimed that the protests had been ‘largely instigated’ from Ukraine with the involvement of Western intelligence services.
In 2014, former presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District Alexander Khloponin said that Western intelligence services were seeking to destabilise the North Caucasus ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Among the issues allegedly being exploited by foreign intelligence services, he cited campaigns calling for the recognition of the Circassian Genocide and the Ossetian–Ingush conflict.