Last month, when the US warned of the presence of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders and President Joe Biden threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions if he invaded the neighboring country, researchers noticed a rise in social media posts accusing Ukraine of plotting a plot. genocide against ethnic Russians.
In one example of this, a branch of Moscow-controlled broadcaster RT circulated a video of Putin saying that what has been happening in eastern Ukraine “resembles genocide”.
Then, on December 13, the News Front – which the US State Department describes as a vehicle of disinformation linked to Russian security services – published an article saying that the US does not consider the massacres to be genocide.
According to researchers, in the months since Russia began accumulating troops in the region, Moscow and its army of online allies have been recycling old arguments that Western Ukrainians are aligned with Nazism. They falsely accused the US of using third-party forces to plot a chemical attack and claimed that Russia’s planned military operations are aimed at protecting ethnic Russians or preventing actions by NATO, the Western military alliance.
US intelligence officials said Russia has been producing a steady stream of disinformation about Ukraine since 2014. But they saw the flow intensify in December and January as Moscow increased pressure on the Kiev government.
UK-based tech firm Logically, which helps governments and businesses fight disinformation, has begun monitoring Russian-aligned social media accounts such as those of RT and Sputnik, as well as the Twitter accounts of Russian officials.
According to Logically, since the beginning of November there has been a sharp increase in publications and articles accusing some Ukrainians of being neo-Nazis. The Moscow-backed information campaign accusing the US of planning a chemical attack reportedly peaked on December 21.
Much of the advertising targets domestic audiences in Russia and pro-Moscow Ukrainians, said Brian Murphy, vice president of strategic operations at Logically. For him, if Russia does invade Ukraine, it wants to ensure the support of Russian speakers in the country when its tanks and artillery cross fields and tear down houses. “Today there are very few people left in Ukraine who are still on the fence,” Murphy said. “Moscow wants to strengthen the support it has in the Ukrainian regions occupied by separatists and in Russia itself.”
But the propaganda can easily spread beyond the Russian-speaking audience.
Intelligence officials say that while Russia is unlikely to be able to change many people in Europe, its messages are best received in South America and Africa, propagating uncertainty about which country is responsible for the Ukraine crisis.
As it did in its efforts to divide the American electorate in 2016 by stoking discussions about racism, guns and other divisive issues, Russia is trying to intensify polarization in Ukraine to tactically benefit from it, Murphy said.
In a report released last week, the State Department said much of the disinformation repeats age-old themes, such as portraying Russia as a victim of US actions, describing Western societies as on the brink of collapse because they have drifted away from values. traditions and to characterize Washington as a defender of revolutions in the region.
Researchers have identified similar themes streamed from Russian accounts, including an increase in the number of posts alleging that NATO and Ukrainian forces are preparing to attack Russian speakers in Ukraine. Allegations about an alliance intervention in Ukraine peaked in late December and grew further in mid-January, according to Logically.
Former director of the intelligence branch of the US Department of Homeland Security, Murphy said that alleging NATO interference in Ukraine has long been one of the accusations routinely leveled by Moscow. While it is often difficult to pinpoint the source of specific misinformation, researchers can discern when many Russian accounts begin to spread the same narrative.
“It feels like a coordinated campaign,” Murphy said. “Accounts start posting similar messages at about the same time.” The claim that the US was preparing a chemical attack was originally made by the Russian Defense Minister. But disinformation experts have tracked how it was amplified by several different accounts.
Versions of the indictment were circulated by state media outlets and on websites that the US government said are used by Russian intelligence services, such as the News Front and the Strategic Culture Foundation, said Bret Schafer. He is director of the information handling team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an organization that monitors disinformation and other efforts aimed at weakening democratic governments. For Schafer, the timing of the publications was curious.
A few weeks after the posts were published in December, US officials said a Russian-led false flag operation could be used as an excuse to deploy Russian troops in Ukraine in the name of protecting the Russian-speaking Ukrainian population.
“It would be conceivable to view the Russian messages transmitted last month as an attempt to create confusion and uncertainty ahead of the impending Russian operation,” Schafer said. “Or, in classic political propaganda terms, accusing others of what you yourself are guilty of.”
​Larissa Doroshenko, a researcher at Northeastern University, said Russian disinformation tactics employed in Ukraine use both false and true reports, but without relevance to current events, to distort narratives or hide real intentions.
Doroshenko studied Russian disinformation surrounding the 2014 pro-democracy protests in Ukraine and found that even then Moscow used various means to promote narratives.
“We focus on social networks, but it’s an approach that involves multiple platforms,” ​​he said. “It’s social networks, but also these so-called journalism sites, these political propaganda sites, which use language aimed at attracting ordinary people.”
According to Doroshenko, Putin took Crimea stealthily. But the buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border is anything but stealthy. She said Russian troop deployments and Russian threats to Ukraine could be aimed both at stoking nationalist passions and squelching domestic criticism of Putin’s efforts to shut down nonprofits such as the human rights organization Memorial International or groups linked to the opposition leader. Russian Alexei Navalni.
“If you manage to create an external enemy,” said the researcher, “all these questions of what is happening with civil society in Russia lose importance.”
