A leak of internal documents from the Russian agency Social Design Agency has revealed a detailed plan known as "Project 2026," an ambitious initiative to create an alternative information ecosystem designed to reshape how search engines and AI chatbots interpret political events. This marks a significant departure from previous tactics; while the focus was once on achieving viral popularity on social media, the current priority is controlling the underlying data sources relied upon by search algorithms and large language models.
Obtained by Bloomberg News in June 2026, the 73 internal documents from the Social Design Agency include project proposals, chat logs, and technical materials dating from May 2023 to April 2026. According to these materials, the agency aimed to move beyond simply spreading disinformation on social networks, seeking instead to construct a multi-layered influence architecture consisting of a network of wiki-resources, media outlets, and front-group think tanks. These platforms were designed to provide the very data that search algorithms and AI training sets use to generate information.
This strategy was dubbed "cognitive strikes" against Western societies. The documents openly describe the necessity of embedding specific narratives into reference-level information, ensuring they appear organically in chatbot responses and search results while maintaining a safe distance from any overt Russian affiliation. As one reviewer put it, the strategy was an attempt to "pollute search engines by flooding them with content that cross-references our own narratives."
Project 2026 envisioned the creation of numerous parallel encyclopedic projects similar to Wikipedia but under Moscow’s control. The authors intended for these resources to gradually supplement or even displace existing knowledge bases, crafting an alternative reality for both algorithms and millions of end-users. Bloomberg identified at least three such resources targeting Armenia, which were launched in January 2026 and soon after blocked by hosting providers. These sites—spyurk.cyou, sevan.info, and khachkar.info—hosted clones of Russian-language Wikipedia articles with subtle narrative modifications tailored to the Kremlin’s geopolitical objectives.
Another project targeting Germany was detailed in a document dated January 15, 2026. Approximately 200,000 web pages were created for its implementation. The plan involved the monthly production and editing of 100 articles to enhance visibility in search engines, alongside training six different AI platforms on this content every month. This clearly demonstrates a transition from mass dissemination to micro-targeting the information flows that feed search and AI systems themselves.
The documents confirm that the Social Design Agency already possessed practical experience with such operations. The agency is well-known for its involvement in the "Doppelganger" campaign, a network of cloned European media sites that has been spreading pro-Kremlin narratives since 2023. Concurrently, the agency helped coordinate "Storm-1516," a Russian disinformation campaign that has been producing AI-generated videos and fake news on an industrial scale since August 2023. Project 2026 was viewed as a third, more fundamental level of impact: targeting not just news feeds or social media, but the very foundation from which AI and search engines draw their knowledge.
The leaked materials emphasize the importance of working "upstream"—at the stage of data collection, structuring, and indexing before the information reaches AI training sets and search engine knowledge bases. This approach would allow propaganda to seep into AI-generated answers without obvious signs of manipulation, making it far more resilient to traditional counter-disinformation efforts. Experts refer to this tactic as "data poisoning"—the contamination of information sources at their very roots.
A central figure in coordinating Project 2026 is identified as Sofia Zakharova, head of the Department of Information Technology and Communication Infrastructure within the Russian Presidential Administration. According to the leak, she supervised the funding and approval of specific sub-projects, working directly with Social Design Agency leaders Ilya Gambashidze and Nikolai Tupikin. In 2024, Zakharova was added to the sanctions lists of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union for her role in the Doppelganger campaign and her involvement in coordinated information manipulation.
Based on the leak, the execution of Project 2026 required close coordination with state agencies, substantial financial resources, and sophisticated technical infrastructure. The documents indicate that Russian influence operators sought to move beyond traditional disinformation channels to seize control of the information sources that underpin modern search algorithms and large language models—tools upon which the information-gathering habits of hundreds of millions of people depend.
