By Olha Chepil | 2024-02-26

KYIV -- Russia is ramping up efforts to spread "fake news" about Ukraine through a web of fake accounts on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and the Telegram messaging app, according to a team of Ukrainian internet analysts and internal Kremlin documents.

The team uncovered tens of thousands of manipulated media publications, fake news items and bot-generated posts on social networks that primarily aimed to discredit Ukraine's military and political leadership.

These accounts were created by Russian intelligence agencies, said Alina Bondarchuk, director of the information collection and monitoring department of the Center for Countering Disinformation in Kyiv.

Over the past year, Bondarchuk and her colleagues identified about 10,000 destructive news reports.

"We see Russian narratives online every day that threaten Ukraine's national security," she told Kontur.

For example, the Center for Countering Disinformation and the cyber department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on February 22 revealed a large-scale disinformation campaign by Russia to discredit Oleksandr Syrskyi, the recently appointed top uniformed commander of the Ukrainian military.

Not a son

Russian propaganda is disseminating fake news about Ivan Syrskyi. The propagandists falsely call him Gen. Syrskyi's son and claim that he supports Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"But Ivan Syrskyi isn't the son of the Ukrainian army chief," Bondarchuk said. "He's the son of Oleksandr Syrskyi's ex-wife from her second marriage, and she lives in Australia."

"Russian propaganda is actively trying to foist on Oleksandr Syrskyi an image of a 'Soviet and Russian man' who doesn't factor in human losses," she said. "The fact is that soldiers respect the new commander in chief and point to his deep combat experience."

Targeting Zelenskyy

As the war enters its third year, Russia is stepping up its disinformation campaigns to promote the Kremlin's interests, Bondarchuk said.

"One of the main narratives the Kremlin is going to promote is Volodymyr Zelenskyy's alleged illegitimacy ... and [his] 'usurpation' of power," she said. "In reality, according to the constitution, Zelenskyy is fulfilling his duties."

In the past six months, the main topic of the Kremlin's propaganda onslaught against Zelenskyy has been the rift between him and Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, whom Syrskyi replaced at the helm of Ukrainian forces.

The Washington Post reported on this on February 16, citing internal Kremlin documents provided by an unnamed European intelligence service.

The newspaper obtained more than 100 documents, which for the first time exposed the scope of the Kremlin's disinformation aimed at Zelenskyy with the goal of dividing and destabilizing Ukrainian society.

"The Russians tried to discredit Zelenskyy in the first year of the war. They circulated all sorts of propaganda that he had fled [the country]. It just didn't work," Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst in Kyiv and director of the Penta Center for Political Studies, told Kontur.

"Then they threw out reports that he was exporting money across borders, and there were different fake news stories about his family. All of this had a minimal effect," he said. "People didn't particularly believe the stories."

The documents show that Kremlin operatives had been attempting to orchestrate a split between Zelenskyy and Zaluzhny for many months, the Washington Post reported.

Putin's administration ordered a group of Russian political strategists to use social media and fake news articles to push the theme that Zelenskyy "is hysterical and weak," one Kremlin political strategist wrote a year ago, after a meeting of senior Russian officials and Moscow spin doctors.

Regarding Zaluzhny, the narrative aimed to show that Zelenskyy fears being "pushed aside, therefore he is getting rid of the dangerous ones," the strategist said.

The documents also discuss how in January 2023 Sergey Kiriyenko, Putin's first deputy chief of staff, organized a campaign to discredit Zelenskyy and spread disinformation on social networks.

"Kiriyenko laid out four key objectives for the Ukraine propaganda team: discrediting Kyiv's military and political leadership, splitting the Ukrainian elite, demoralizing Ukrainian troops and disorienting the Ukrainian population," the Washington Post reported.

"Kiriyenko ... provides the propaganda component of the war against Ukraine," Fesenko said. "Kiriyenko being named in these documents only confirms that he's the leader of this whole propaganda machine against Ukraine."

Amplifying fault lines

The Kremlin is investing heavily in the disinformation campaign, but it is largely failing, analysts say.

For example, according to the documents obtained by the Washington Post, paid trolls were receiving 60,000 RUB (about $660) per month for writing 100 comments a day.

They put out more than 1,300 posts and 37,000 comments on Ukrainian social networks per week.

With these posts, Russia is trying to provoke internecine warfare in Ukraine, Fesenko said.

"War fatigue, the difficult situation on the front and the sense that the war is dragging out engender complicated, contradictory public sentiment," he said. "Russia sees that, and it wants to split the Ukrainian public."

"[Russian propagandists] choose specific fault lines -- cracks that exist in society, such as the relationship between Zelenskyy's team and different political institutions," he added.

Among the materials the Russian political strategists spotlighted was a baseless Facebook post saying that the family of a fallen Ukrainian soldier did not receive any state assistance, the Washington Post reported. The post attracted more than 2 million views.

In addition, Moscow's propagandists started to spread a fabricated post on Telegram saying that the Kyiv authorities' main goal was to fight until the last Ukrainian.

"In November, Telegram channels that are very actively used for these efforts started posting screenshots saying that Ukrainian soldiers will supposedly go to Kyiv and there will be a civil war, so the message was flee Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa," Fesenko said. "They wanted to spur panic. But this was quickly refuted."

Ukrainians wise to fake news

"In countries where there is support for Ukraine, such as France, Germany and the United States, the Russians were trying to show that Zelenskyy was weak and making some bad decisions," said Ihor Petrenko, a political scientist and director and founder of the Kyiv-based think tank United Ukraine.

"But I'd say that these campaigns weren't very successful," he told Kontur.

Even the Kremlin's own polls have shown that its campaign has not had a major effect in Ukraine: although Zelenskyy's approval ratings have slipped, they have not cratered, while Ukrainians have learned to tell the difference between truth and lies.

"These campaigns haven't had a major influence," Petrenko said. "The influence has been rather minor because Ukrainians know how to filter things out."