Ukraine crisis: Facebook takes down two ‘covert influence ops’ linked to Russia, Belarus

Amid the ongoing the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Facebook and Twitter removed two anti-Ukraine “covert influence operations” over the weekend. One of these operations is linked to Russia while the other one has Belarusian connections.
 
One of these operations – a propagandist campaign featuring a website pushing anti-Ukraine agenda—was an offshoot of a known Russian disinformation operation. Computer-generated faces were used to bolster the credibility of fake columnists across platforms including Instagram in this operation, as per a Facebook spokesperson.
 
Two of these profiles created using AI were Vladimir Bondarenko and Irina Kerimova, as per an NBC report. Both these accounts were linked to Ukraine Today, a Russian propaganda outfit aimed at making Ukraine look like a failed state.
 
While Vladimir had a complete backstory on Ukraine Today website, Kerimova was a private guitar teacher before becoming the editor-in-chief of this website in 2017. As per Vladimir’s profile on the website, he was an aviation engineer until he took to blogging when Ukraine’s infrastructure was impacted. While Kerimova dons mismatched earrings, Vladimir has weird ears.
 
The other campaign used hacked accounts to push similar propaganda and was tied to a known Belarusian hacking group. Meta’s head of security Nathaniel Gleicher told NBC, “The good news is that neither of these campaigns have been that effective, but we do see these actors trying to target Ukraine at this point.”
 
He further added, “These actors are trying to undermine trust in the Ukrainian government, suggest that it’s a failed state, [and] suggest that the war is going very poorly in Ukraine or trying to praise Russia.”
 
(With NBC inputs)

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