Around 250 blue Stars of David were tagged on buildings in France, in what the Parisian police chief called an “antisemitic” incident. Officials in France claim that a Russian-speaking person living abroad “may have paid for” the graffiti and Russian-controlled social media accounts promoted images of the graffiti.
Since the graffiti began appearing, French police have arrested, questioned, and deported two Moldovan nationals, suspecting the operation has connections with Russia. While the graffiti could be construed as supportive of Israel – after all, the graffiti is of a blue Star of David, evoking images of the Israeli flag – the cultural context in Europe suggests that the graffiti instead is meant to conjure reminders of Nazi-era terror, where Jewish businesses and homes were tagged with the Star of David symbol.
The French Foreign Ministry blames Russia for the chaos, claiming that a network of “bot accounts” operated by the Kremlin on Elon Musk’s platform, X (formerly Twitter). These accounts whipped up “controversy and confusion” about the incident, which spread alarm about “surging antisemitism” in France. Further, the Foreign Ministry claims that the 1,095 bot accounts, affiliated with the Russian-controlled network Recent Reliable News, posted 2,589 individual posts on X surrounding the incident.
They source their intelligence from Viginum, the French state’s digital watchdog formed in the aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 campaign hacking. Of note, Vigium data suggests that Recent Reliable News knew of the graffiti in France “48 hours before” other users on X, highlighting an alleged link between the perpetrators of the graffiti and the Kremlin.