Leaked chats and documents showcase the Russian presidential administration’s role in false-flag vandalism attacks and election interference campaigns in Europe and beyond.
In September 2025, nine mosques and cultural centers in and around Paris were targeted with a grotesque Islamophobic stunt: Bloody severed pig heads, each marked with the word “Macron” in blue ink, were left outside their front doors.
A few months later, three men from Serbia were convicted of the crime in their home country. They had been directed, the verdicts read, by “structures of the intelligence service of the Russian Federation” in an effort to incite unrest and intolerance.
Now, a cache of leaked documents obtained by reporters from Delfi Estonia and shared with OCCRP and other media partners pulls back the curtain on that provocation. The files showcase the meticulous internal planning that went into the operation, shed new light on who was behind it, and unveil a swathe of other pro-Kremlin influence efforts across Europe and beyond.
The documents point to the Social Design Agency (SDA), a Russian PR firm already sanctioned by the U.S., the U.K. and the EU for previous influence campaigns — and to the Russian Presidential Administration, whose officials are seen overseeing the firm’s work.
The several dozen files include internal reports about planned and completed missions as well as screenshots of private conversations from a workplace collaboration tool used by both SDA staffers and administration officials.
They detail numerous operations — described internally as “cognitive strikes” against the West — that included other vandalism attacks in France and Germany, efforts to advance pro-Russian messages through Western opinion leaders, and election interference campaigns. Among the latter is a plan to influence the upcoming parliamentary election in Armenia through a media outlet aimed at Russian-speaking voters, with the goal of arresting the country’s geopolitical turn towards the West.
A document titled “Report on Operation Pig’s Head” details the internal planning that went into the Paris mosque attacks, including photos of the prepared pig heads before they were distributed, that have never appeared in public.
According to the document, a group of six operatives arrived in Paris on September 7, conducted «reconnaissance» on September 8, delivered the pig heads on the following night, and then «successfully left the country.”
The file concludes with a lengthy list of news articles in French, English, and Russian that covered the attack. “The operation received wide coverage in world media outlets,” it boasts.
One leaked message sets out one of the goals of this kind of information warfare: helping Russia “maintain the image of a superpower” on the world stage. “The more Russia participates in active influence campaigns all over the world, the stronger the image of a global Russian power,” it reads.