Inauthentic assets focused on domestic audiences promoted a Quintana Roo political candidate and attacked opponents
By Esteban Ponce de León
On April 6, 2021, Facebook took down a network of assets engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior focusing on Quintana Roo, a South Mexican state along the Caribbean Sea. According to the DFRLab’s independent research, the assets showed connections to the MORENA political party in that state, including its general secretary Jorge Parra Moguel and Marybel Villegas Canché, a political candidate running for mayor of Benito Juárez, a local municipality.
The DFRLab had access to 18 pages, 71 Facebook user accounts, and seven Instagram accounts before the removal. Some of the pages in the network presented…
Narratives critical of the exercise rehash claims from last year’s maneuvers in an attempt to stir COVID fears
By Lukas Andriukaitis
As the NATO exercise Defender Europe 21 is about to start, European fringe media outlets, pro-Kremlin media and populist European political parties have begun using coronavirus narratives to condemn the exercises.
Defender 21 is the biggest NATO exercise taking place in Europe this year. And just like last year’s Defender 20 exercise, it is receiving negative attention and online engagement with very similar coronavirus narratives. Generally speaking, these narratives are primarily pushed by three groups: fringe media outlets across Europe, populist far-left political parties and pro-Kremlin media outlets in Russia and Europe.
Most of the articles that…
Online videos and satellite imagery show Russian military equipment arrival in Crimea and Voronezh
By Michael Sheldon
In the latter days of March 2021, videos began appearing online showing large amounts of military equipment moving toward the Russian border with Ukraine. The scale of this move is highly significant, with such a concentration of troops near Ukraine not seen since 2014–2015. Contextually, the move was also unusual, since no drills were initially announced that would correspond to it.
Russian troop movements concentrated in occupied Crimea and Voronezh, which lies about 300km north-east of the major Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. These developments come during a tenuous period: a ceasefire in the Donbas has deteriorated completely…
High follower accounts leveraged to amplify the reach of a fraudulent crypto scam targeting South African Twitter users
By Jean Le Roux
A cryptocurrency investment scam using a network of Twitter-based sockpuppet accounts is targeting South African users by leveraging fabricated “testimonials” posted on the platform.
Since the start of the year, the network has posted more than 43,000 of these tweets, usually in reply to high follower accounts such as celebrities, news publications and journalists. A rise in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since late last year has made cryptocurrencies an attractive lure to get users to part with their cash.
The network consists of two parts. The first layer is scores of sockpuppets that…
Assets linked to Georgian far-right and pro-Kremlin party were camouflaged as entertainment content
By Sopo Gelava and Eto Buziashvili
Amid a deepening political crisis in Georgia related to the detention of the leader of the main opposition party, Facebook removed a network connected to the violent far-right and pro-Kremlin party Georgian March. The network of 70 assets camouflaged itself as a collection of entertainment and online shopping platforms and included 24 Facebook pages, 12 groups, 23 user accounts, and 11 Instagram profiles.
The takedown comes after a December 2020 DFRLab investigation that identified an inauthentic network promoting Georgian March and pro-government media outlet PosTV on Facebook.
In a statement released by a Facebook…
Pro-Kremlin media provided simultaneous coverage after Putin shared a story about a former colleague dying from COVID in Latvia
By Nika Aleksejeva
A personal anecdote by Russian President Vladimir Putin about a “former colleague” who died from COVID-19 in Latvia prompted a near simultaneous media blitz in pro-Kremlin outlets questioning the quality of the Latvian health system.
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the capacity of healthcare systems globally. Latvia was initially very successful in dealing with the first wave of COVID-19 in Spring 2020, but the second wave in Fall 2020 hit harder, with the disease overwhelming most hospitals throughout the country.
Since October 2020, Latvia has had a lower COVID-19 case mortality rate than Russia, according to Johns…
Malicious actors carried out operation after U.S. company announced plans to invest in Poland’s nuclear power program
By Givi Gigitashvili
A cyber-enabled information operation aimed at sowing fear about a non-existent radioactive threat targeted Polish government websites in March 2021, in the latest example of a hybrid disinformation campaign targeting the country. On March 17, hackers broke into two Polish government websites and planted false information about nuclear waste leak in Lithuania, which allegedly endangered people’s lives in northern Poland. Polish authorities acknowledged the fact that the websites were targeted by malicious actors, but they have not attributed it to anyone specific. …
Fringe media, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, and online TV spread conspiracy theories about AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine
By Roman Osadchuk
Anonymous Telegram channels, Kremlin proxies, and political commentators attacked Ukraine’s vaccination effort by spreading mis- and disinformation about safety and conspiracy theories about the process. The claims spread across several platforms, amid what is already significant vaccine hesitancy in Ukraine.
According to a recent poll by Kharkiv Institute for Social Research for the Public Interest Journalism Lab, 47 percent of Ukrainians did not feel ready to vaccinate, while another survey by the Rating social research group reported that 57 percent of respondents said they would not vaccinate. The Ukraine vaccination effort kicked off with a barrage of…
Russian outlets promoted photos of body double alleging Prigozhin visited Lithuania in 2020 despite EU sanctions
By Eto Buziashvili and Lukas Andriukaitis
Russian online media outlets targeted Lithuania with a disinformation campaign claiming Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch close to the Kremlin, had been let into the country. In reality, the man these outlets presented as Prigozhin was an impersonator, who, according to a new report by Lithuania’s intelligence services, made two visits to Lithuania in 2020.
Prigozhin, often referred to as “Putin’s Chef,” is the founder of Russia’s infamous Internet Research Agency, the state-backed troll farm accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. …
Kremlin-linked social media accounts promoted Sputnik V mostly in Latin America, while China targeted Asian countries
By Givi Gigitashvili and Esteban Ponce de León
Amid the ongoing race to dominate the COVID-19 vaccine uptake, Russia and China have been actively promoting their respective vaccines abroad through state-funded outlets and diplomatic accounts. The DFRLab found that, while Kremlin-funded Russian media outlets put forward negative narratives about Western vaccines in an attempt to undermine trust, Chinese state-backed media outlets have focused more on promoting the positive image of the country’s own vaccines as well as its role as a benevolent leader combatting COVID-19 internationally.
Asserting themselves as global powers, China and Russia have attempted to launch a new…
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@AtlanticCouncil's Digital Forensic Research Lab. Catalyzing a global network of digital forensic researchers, following conflicts in real time.
