Article from Voice of America
As bullets and bombs fall on Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanded information war across Eastern Europe, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fear about refugees and drive up fuel prices, while calling the West an unreliable ally.
In Bulgaria, a senior official revealed this month that the Kremlin paid journalists, political analysts and other influential citizens 2,000 euros a month to post pro-Russian content online. Researchers have also uncovered sophisticated networks of fake accounts, in an escalating spread of disinformation and propaganda in the country.
According to Graham Brookie, senior director at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, for Russia's leaders, widespread propaganda and disinformation campaigns are a highly cost-effective alternative to traditional means of war or diplomacy.
“Promoting these reactions is effective for Russian information operations,” Mr. Brookie said. “Their state media does audience analysis better than most media companies in the world. This propaganda has been successful in countries with more polarized media markets.”
When Bulgaria, Poland, and other former Warsaw Pact countries aligned themselves with their NATO allies in support of Ukraine, Russia responded with a wave of disinformation and propaganda that sought to exploit public debates over globalization and Western expansion.
For Poland, this took the form of anti-Western propaganda and conspiracy theories. One, spread by a group of hackers allied with Russia in an apparent attempt to divide Ukraine and Poland, suggested that Polish gangs were harvesting the organs of Ukrainian refugees.
Russia's attack comes as Eastern European governments, like others around the world, grapple with discontent and unrest caused by rising fuel and food prices.
Bulgaria recently expelled 70 Russian diplomatic staff over espionage concerns, prompting the Kremlin to threaten to end diplomatic relations with Sofia. The same week, Russia's embassy in Sofia posted a fundraising appeal asking Bulgarian citizens to donate their private funds to support the Russian military and its invasion of Ukraine.
The embassy has also spread disinformation conspiracy theories claiming that the United States runs secret laboratories in Ukraine. Embassies have become key to Russia’s disinformation campaigns, especially since many tech companies have begun to restrict Russian state media since the start of the aggression.
Trolls and fake, anonymous accounts remain valuable parts of the disinformation arsenal. Researchers at the Disinformation Situation Center identified anonymous accounts spreading pro-Russian content, as well as online harassment directed at Bulgarians expressing support for Ukraine.
Some of the harassment appeared coordinated, based on the speed and similarities in the attacks, say researchers at DSC, a Europe-based nonprofit.
"This scare tactic is not new, but the war in Ukraine has brought some of the coordination efforts into the public space.",” says the DSC organization.
Reflecting the difficulty of identifying the origin of disinformation, the DSC also identified a network of three anonymous Facebook accounts pushing pro-Russian conversation topics that researchers concluded could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Facebook said Friday it would remove pages that appeared to violate some of the platform's rules regarding multiple accounts. But the platform said it found nothing to suggest the accounts were part of a disinformation network. Instead, they were run by a single Bulgarian user who liked to repost other people's pro-Russian content.
In fact, after a senior Bulgarian official revealed Russia's scheme to pay some journalists and political pundits 2,000 euros, or 4,000 Bulgarian leva, for posting friendly content, the author scoffed at the idea of receiving money.
"Thank you Mr. Putin for the gesture, but I don't need 4000 leva to like Russia," he writes. "I like to do it for free."