ExTrac Profile picture
May 2 11 tweets 11 min read
1. Since last week, there have been a number of signs that #Russia may be planning to invade #Moldova.

In the last few days, there have been several likely false flag attacks in #Transnistria, events that have been amplified massively by a simultaneous influence campaign.
2. To track this, we analysed 169,000 posts shared across pro-war, #Kremlin-aligned communities on Telegram last week.

We sifted through this data for any mentions of #Transnistria, #Moldova, and #Tiraspol.

Here’s what it looks like.
3. The main claims are strikingly similar to those that emerged in the run-up to #Russia’s invasion of #Ukraine in February.

They revolve around pre-emptive justifications for war based on #Transnistria|n ‘insecurity’ and talk of #Ukraine’s ‘looming threat.’
4. On 25 April, there was a surge in pro-#Kremlin rhetoric around #Transnistria as supporters of #Moscow began to share news of a string of explosions in #Tiraspol.

#Transnistria was purportedly 'under attack.’
5. A day later on 26 April, #Kremlin supporters doubled down on this rhetoric, citing a video showing local security forces at high alert on the lookout for 'terrorist infiltrators.'

#Transnistria was 'in need of protection.’
6. Things came to a head later that day when new footage emerged showing ‘unknown gunmen’ who had ‘crossed illegally’ from #Ukraine shooting three RPGs at the MGB HQ in #Tiraspol.

There was now ‘evidence’ of Ukrainian involvement.
7. In the days since, pro-war communities have also been sharing a video clip of a Moldovan woman saying ‘#Russia|n soldiers will be greeted with bread, salt and wine’ when they come to #Moldova.

Per this line, #Moldova|ns ‘want’ #Moscow to invade.
8. They’ve also been reiterating their claims of #Ukraine’s 'looming threat.'

Here’s a poster they recently attributed to #Ukraine. Text reads 'liberate #Transnistria’ in Ukrainian and Moldovan.

On closer inspection, it's a remake of a Soviet poster from WWII.
9. In any case, so far, this is almost exactly the same military/info playbook that #Moscow deployed immediately before its invasion of #Ukraine.

That said, it’s much smaller in scale, and there hasn’t (yet) been a large spike in comms akin to that which we saw in February.
10. What seems clear on the back of all this is that #Transnistria has indeed been tabled as an option for #Moscow.

The justification narrative has been set out clearly, with both ‘threats’ from #Ukraine and ‘invitations’ from #Moldova.
11. We’ll be continuing to follow this closely in the coming days.

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More from @Ex_Trac

May 3
1. #IS deployed 342 attacks globally during Ramadan, 219 of them since 17 April as part of its global revenge campaign.

This is ten attacks more than it reported during Ramadan last year.

Here’s what that surge looks like when charted out.
2. Most attacks (by far) were reported from #Iraq, followed by #Nigeria, #Syria and #Afghanistan.

These four states accounted for three quarters of all #IS’s attacks in Ramadan.
3. Besides the sole attack reported from #Uzbekistan at the beginning of the month, no major new fronts were opened anywhere outside of #Nigeria.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 25
1. Here’s a new update on #IS’s global Ramadan campaign.

In the last week, #IS has deployed more attacks than at any other point since last Ramadan.
2. Since 17 April, #IS has carried out some 132 attacks as part of this campaign.

That's nearly three times more ops per day than usual.
3. #IS’s attacks have been spread far and wide, but with four clear front-runners: #Iraq, #Nigeria, #Syria, and #Afghanistan.

#Iraq: 43
#Nigeria: 34
#Syria: 19
#Afghanistan: 13
#Niger: 5
#DRC: 4
#Egypt: 5
#Somalia: 4
#Pakistan: 2
#India: 1
#Libya: 1
#Uzbekistan: 1
Read 8 tweets
Apr 4
1. Over the last 24 hours, we’ve been tracking pro-#Kremlin responses to #Bucha on #Telegram and #VK.

Pro-#Russia voices started by outright denying it, but by the end of the day, guided by strategic disinformation from the #Kremlin, they were blaming it on #Ukraine.
2. Initially, proponents of the invasion said it was all a lie, citing a clip of the mayor of #Bucha purportedly celebrating the liberation of the town days earlier but not mentioning any massacres.
3. Then, the preferred framing shifted to one that blamed the deaths on #Ukraine artillery fire.

The "supporting evidence" for this claim was a clip of a purported #UKR soldier talking about indiscriminate mortar fire against #RUS positions in the southeast a few weeks ago.
Read 9 tweets
Mar 18
1. This week’s issue of al-Naba’, which was published last night, took #IS's campaign to legitimise its new leader in a new, quite surprising direction.
2. It was very defensive in tone.

Directly comparing the legacy of #IS's 'caliphs' with that of the Rashidun caliphs, it pushed back on criticism—seemingly from within #IS's own circles—of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi and played down the strategic significance of his loss.
3. #IS also pushed back on criticism about how long it had taken it to confirm that Abu Ibrahim had been killed and replaced by Abul Hasan.

Per al-Naba’, everyone who needed to had pledged allegiance within less than 48 hours of the #Atmeh raid.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 17
1. Earlier this month, we reported that #IS comms activity had fallen off a cliff in recent weeks.

In the last few days, the reason for that has become clear: its media team was putting everything into prepping for a global campaign drumming up support for the new caliph.
2. The campaign started on 10 March, when #IS published a statement from new spox Abu ‘Umar al-Muhajir declaring that Qurashi had died and been replaced by Qurashi 2.0.

This came after a week-on-week drop in comms that left #IS supporter activities at a historic low.
3. It wasn’t enough to just publish a statement. #IS needed to show that its new leader was credible.

Accordingly, in the days that followed, it published hundreds of photographs showing fighters from West Africa to Southeast Asia pledging allegiance to the new caliph.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 15
1. Recent pronouncements from #Moscow about its ‘concerns’ around the use of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (#CBRN) weapons systems in #Ukraine are having a direct and sustained impact on the pro-#Russia information landscape.
2. @Ex_Trac data shows that #Moscow’s comms re #CBRN have been normalising it as ‘reasonable’ justification for war among pro-#Kremlin communities.

To track this, we visualised the frequency with which #CBRN-related terms have been referenced by pro-#Kremlin voices over 2021/22.
3. The regularity of posts including the word ‘биолаборатория’ (‘biolaboratory’) increased by a factor of more than four hundred after the #Kremlin’s claim it was targeting bioweapons facilities at the end of February.
Read 7 tweets

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