1/9 🧵 10(!) anti-Ukrainian demonstrations in European cities linked to a Russian intelligence service.
We have just published the second piece of our investigation on how leaked Russian documents reveal fake protests, shared by men in St. Petersburg. 👉 dr.dk/nyheder/indlan…
2/9 Content from the fake demonstrations have been spread on social platforms Dec. 2022 - April 2023.
The playbook: Send three persons to a legit demonstration with similar posters, film them in front of a crowd and share to make it look like Europeans are against Ukraine.
3/9 We can reveal how a “nazi Ukrainian supporter” at a protest in March has posed as an “anti-Ukrainian European” at another fake protest in February.
Sunday we published how Russian intelligence documents revealed fake anti Turkish protests in Paris.
4/9 Another "protester" has been identified at two fake demonstrations.
01/28/23 he is in at a climate demo in Hague (left), 01/31/23 he is in Bruxelles at a union's demo (right), posing with the same message. But who are the men in St. Petersburg sharing this content online? 👇
5/9 An Algerian citizen (left) & Moroccan citizen (right) have attempted to spread content from the fake anti-Ukrainian demonstrations to hundreds of thousands of social media users.
Both men live in St. Petersburg, where they study at the university and spread Russian disinfo.
6/9 Besides from spreading content of fake protesters online, the Algerian RUS-resident has offered photo jobs in several Facebook groups - prior to several demonstrations in European cities.
Here is one of the posts from 02/07/23 four days before a fake demonstration in Paris.
7/9 Here is an overview of the 10 fake demonstrations.
The protests are linked to the North African men, living in St. Petersburg, whose social media profiles appear in Russian intelligence documents. Sources call the manifestations an operation initiated by an intel. service.
8/9 Here are images of 4 out of 10 fake protests.
As you can see the same messages and misspellings appear. And if you look closely, 'Zelenskiy' is spelled in the same way, even though his name is spelled differently in the different countries where the protests take place.
9/9 The Russian government has not responded to our request for comments.
The Algerian calls the story an “attempt of defamation”. The Moroccan claims his social profiles were hacked and denies intelligene ties.
Their disinfo profiles were deleted a few hours after we spoke.
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