Putin's Trolls by Jessikka Aro

Author:Jessikka Aro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IG Publishing

FAKE ANONYMOUS

The hackers claimed to be from the international group known as Anonymous. However, the real Anonymous is generally politically neutral, and these hackers seemed to be driving a political agenda. The documents they uploaded to their site were annotated with comments in which specific British politicians were picked apart with strong language.22 In some of the comments, it was claimed that Britain was involved in “waging information warfare against everyone.” Some of the material breached privacy laws: private citizen’s passport data and home addresses were published.

A significant portion of the documents allegedly belonged to the Institute for Statecraft, a London-based research center that focuses on Russian influence operations and other topical issues, with a specific focus on revealing and countering disinformation spread by Russia. Their project named Integrity Initiative aims at building networks and connections between researchers who focus on Russian disinformation throughout Europe. One of their major funders is the British Foreign Ministry.

The hackers had broken into the institute’s computer networks, dug out and possibly edited documents, and then uploaded them to their site. The first batch of documents was uploaded in November 2018, which more following later on. The initial news about the documents—whose authenticity could not be verified—was reported by RT and Sputnik. Troll accounts spread the hack-based stories further on social media.

Martin Kragh contacted me right before Christmas of that year. “The attacks against me have increased significantly in recent weeks,” he said. “RT and Sputnik published information hacked from a British think tank. Apparently, I am ‘the head of the MI6-run Integrity Initiative’s Nordic cluster.’” According to RT and Sputnik, MI6 controlled the Institute for Statecraft. Two conspiracy theories had now become one, with Kragh connected to both.

During one single day, the Russian state media published sixty-two stories about the data breach. Kragh said that meant that the operation was designed in advance. It was likely that RT, Sputnik and others had received word about the hack before it happened. In their stories, the Kremlin’s propaganda outlets claimed that the “leaked documents” revealed a variety of scandalous “facts,” such as the Integrity Initiative’s attempt to install mines around Sevastopol in March 2014 in order to prevent Crimea’s “reunification” with Russia.23 Such an operation never took place. The stories also contemplated the possibility that the Integrity Initiative was tangled up in the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal, the former Russian intelligence officer and double agent for Britain who was poisoned in 2018.

Several extremist political newspapers in Sweden followed the Kremlin’s lead and produced stories based on the hacked documents.

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