As the fall of Viktor Yanukovych was imminent amid the Euromaidan protests in early 2014, Russia’s military spy agency, the GRU, launched a covert influence operation — one that presaged what Moscow would do in the United States two years later. The campaign was part of an all-out propaganda offensive against the new government in Kyiv and pro-Western protesters, according to The Washington Post.
Its goal was to influence key decision-makers and the wider public to pave the way for the Russian military action that was launched Feb. 27 with the seizure of the Crimean parliament building by armed men, according to a classified GRU report obtained by The Washington Post. Crimea was ultimately annexed by Russia.
The report provides a unique window into one GRU team’s effort across six days in 2014. Starting the day after Yanukovych’s fall, the military spies created a slew of fake personas on the social media platforms of Facebook and its Russian equivalent VKontakte, or VK for short. The personas were meant to represent ordinary people from across Ukraine who were disillusioned with opposition protests at Kiev’s central square, called the Maidan.
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Overall, the GRU team targeted more than 30 Ukrainian groups and social media platforms, as well as 25 “leading, English-language” publications, according to the report.
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The military spies posted physical threats on social media against Yanukovych allies in southeastern Ukraine to bolster Moscow’s claim that radical Ukrainians were inciting violence against Russians in the region. In one case, a fake persona named Vova Kravets issued threats on Facebook against 14 politicians.
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The GRU created a Facebook primer for its psyops personnel, although the instructions were fairly basic. One tip said that operatives need not use their own photo. “You can search for a photo on Facebook itself. Find someone who has very few friends and is not an active user.”
The GRU also used paid ads on Facebook to increase the groups’ popularity, according to the report. Together, the groups received nearly 200,000 views on Facebook on Feb. 27 alone, the report said. The content was republished on other groups on Facebook, on VK and on LiveJournal, another Russian social networking site.
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