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The British Foreign Office says that Russia is using a ‘troll factory’ as one of the new tactics of its large-scale disinformation campaign about its invasion of Ukraine.
Britain said that a UK-funded expert research exposes how the Kremlin is spreading disinformation on social media and in comment sections of popular websites, targeting politicians across a number of countries including Britain, South Africa and India.
It said the research reveals how the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign is designed to manipulate international public opinion of Russia’s war in Ukraine, boost support for it and recruit new sympathisers.
The research is yet to be published.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists, while Ukraine and the West say the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
Russia says the Western media have provided an excessively partial narrative of the war that does not include Moscow’s concerns about the enlargement of NATO and what it says is the persecution of Russian speakers in Ukraine, something denied by Kyiv.
“We cannot allow the Kremlin and its shady troll farms to invade our online spaces with their lies about Putin’s illegal war,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.
“The UK Government has alerted international partners and will continue to work closely with allies and media platforms to undermine Russian information operations,” Truss said.
Moscow has denied past accusations by Western countries of disinformation campaigns, for example Washington’s accusation Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election.
Britain said that there is evidence showing how the troll factory is using Telegram to actively recruit and co-ordinate new supporters who then target the social media profiles of Kremlin critics by spamming them with comments in favour of Putin and his war.
Targets include the senior British ministers and other world leaders, with traces of the operation having been detected across eight social media platforms including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok.
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