Ukrainian authorities say they have dismantled a troll farm scattered across three towns across the country. The operators are said to be linked to Russian intelligence.
Ukraine’s cyberpolice said on August 2 that they had taken down a troll farm, estimated to have one million accounts. They were used to spread disinformation on social networks, according to his observations, which justified such an intervention. Concretely, it was a network of criminals scattered in three cities in Ukraine who used 5,000 SIM cards and more than 200 proxy servers whose IP addresses had been usurped to create fake profiles on several platforms.
The investigation links the organizers of this troll farm to ” a Russian political expert “, close ” of a former leader of our state — understand Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president removed from office after the Maidan revolution in 2014. Social media posts follow Kremlin propaganda, analyzes Ukrainian police, who accuse the operators of being under the tutelage of Russian intelligence .
” The objective of this farm was to discredit the information published by the Ukrainian state, to destabilize the social and political situation in the country and to create internal conflicts ”continue the authorities in a press release. Ukrainian law enforcement has shared images of the seizure of thousands of active SIM cards from operator premises.
A vast network of spies
Russia has been known to run a troll farm almost officially since 2013 with the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based organization whose sole purpose is to spread regime propaganda. The Kremlin goes further since it deploys spies in Ukraine – and in other countries – to inform itself, but also to destabilize the country from within. Thus, several anonymous sources from intelligence have confirmed to the media that Russia tried to place agents, well before the invasion, to prepare its attack.
At the same time, troll farms have been opened on Ukrainian soil by Russian emissaries to relay propaganda from Ukraine. In February 2022, Meta dismantled several groups of fake Facebook accounts promoting false information from Russia and Ukraine. A month later, Ukrainian cyberpolice seized another troll farm, this time responsible for 100,000 fake profiles. The majority of cyberattacks as well as operations aimed at destabilizing the Ukrainian state have failed. Nevertheless, there is no denying the effectiveness of trolls in influencing populations, including within Western powers, in order to create division from social networks.
