New: How Prigozhin used Telegram to build an online platform that in just seven months allowed him to morph from an unofficial extension of the Kremlin to a prominent figure with his own online audience & direct channel to the Russian public time.com/6290378/yevgen… Prigozhin built Wagner in the shadows for almost a decade and was rarely seen in public, denying his connection to the group and even suing news outlets for correctly linking him to Wagner. That all changed abruptly last September. time.com/6290378/yevgen…

The CIA launched a new Telegram channel today to recruit Russians who might be willing to provide state info, complete with a cinematic video in the gray tones of a Cold War thriller.

Analysts say there's a glaring flaw: "they're not offering anything." time.com/6280190/cia-re… The video “goes from grainy sad life in Russia to what–grainy, sad life on the CIA side? Most Russians are suspicious of America & CIA in particular. So associating this with the CIA is only likely to reinforce the belief they’re the ones doing the lying.” time.com/6280190/cia-re…

NEW: Right-wing doctors who made millions off conspiracies & fake Covid drugs are thriving, setting up new telemedicine schemes & buying $3M mansions.

Families who say they caused their loved ones deaths are still fighting for accountability.

My story on how they got away w/ it

https://twitter.com/TIME/status/1658084789981786112

In 2021, I investigated how America’s Frontline Doctors, which despite its name is actually a right-wing political org created to support the Trump admin's reopening push, was making $$ off bogus Covid cures & anti-vax conspiracies. It only got worse.

https://twitter.com/VeraMBergen/status/1431035284649619456

From traitor to hero in less than a day. FWIW, all the facts contradict the emerging whistleblower narrative.

- Teixeira didn’t actually do any whistleblowing - he didn’t expose docs to the public/the press
- He posted docs in group & told them not to share
- His friends in group vehemently deny he’s a whistleblower

"Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak of the government documents to the private online group. One official said Airman Teixeira might have information relevant to the investigation." nytimes.com/2023/04/13/wor… "Members of Thug Shaker Central who spoke to The Times...who came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games" is both an incredible and completely predictable line re: a classified intel leak in 2023 nytimes.com/2023/04/13/wor…

When it comes to leaks of classified government documents, the way they are disseminated is often as telling as the actual information they contain.

And this one is baffling current and former officials and security analysts.

Latest ⬇️ time.com/6270306/leaked… The classified docs sat on Discord chat servers for more than a month, only breaking through to the public—and, it appears, U.S. military officials—when they were posted on Telegram & 4chan

DefSec Austin was first briefed on the leaks on April 6
time.com/6270306/leaked…

New: Inside a year of the Kremlin's information war, which targeted everyone from Ukrainians to right-wing audiences in the US and Europe, countries taking in refugees, those supplying crucial aid, and potentially sympathetic audiences in Africa and LatAm time.com/6257372/russia… "Changing people’s minds is much harder than simply sowing doubt...It’s why Kremlin info operations focus so much on essentially generating chaos, causing contagion, causing a loss of morale, or just getting people simply confused about what’s true." time.com/6257372/russia…

New: After the earthquake, 20K+ tech volunteers came together to scrape calls for help on social media to guide rescue & relief efforts.

But Twitter's recent changes to its API & its internal chaos hampered their efforts at a critical time,they tell TIME time.com/6254500/turkey… Twitter data has long been an invaluable tool in the wake of natural disasters - especially in a country like Turkey, which ranks 7th in the world for users and where almost one in four people over the age of 13 uses the platform time.com/6254500/turkey…

“At a news briefing at their heavily fortified tabulation center here, election officials — most of them Republicans — urged Ms. Lake to cease and desist as their workers, visible behind plate glass, forged ahead with their counting.” nytimes.com/2022/11/10/us/… “Quite frankly, it’s offensive for Kari Lake to say that these people behind me are slow-rolling this when they’re working 14 to 18 hours…Everyone needs to calm down a little bit, tone the rhetoric down. Accuracy is paramount, not speed.”

nytimes.com/2022/11/10/us/…

Speaking to election officials today, there was a palpable sense of relief - at the largely smooth voting process, the orderly concessions even from election deniers (so far), the way a lot of misinformation failed to take root time.com/6231746/voting… “I think I speak for every election administrator in the country when I say that it is a huge relief,” NM’s Secretary of State @NMSOSMaggie told me. “I am just hoping that what we’re seeing is the beginning of a return to norm, to a healthy democracy” time.com/6231746/voting…

One of #Time100Next this year: Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation @FedorovMykhailo, who has played a critical role in fighting Russia on the digital front, using the Kremlin's own playbook against it time.com/collection/tim… "Previously, he was instrumental in making people see what a modern Ukraine looks like. And now, he is at the center of an effort to counteract Russian propaganda in real time" writes @vestager time.com/collection/tim…

As Brazilians vote today, a spate of politically motivated death threats, physical attacks, and killings across the country in recent weeks have raised fears of more widespread violence after the election

My latest: time.com/6218560/politi… While violence against candidates is not unprecedented in Brazilian elections—Bolsonaro himself was stabbed in 2018 —this election has seen an unusual uptick in attacks between supporters & violent threats against public officials, ministers & poll workers time.com/6218560/politi…

TIME's new cover: Inside the mind of Gen. Zaluzhny, a man who never expected to find himself leading Ukraine's armed forces, in his first interview since Russia invaded his country - what it says about Ukraine's military & what comes next.

With @shustry time.com/6216213/ukrain… Zaluzhny was drinking a beer at his wife’s birthday party when he got the call that he was being tapped for the nation’s top military title, outranked only by the Zelensky himself.

“I’ve often looked back and asked myself: How did I get myself into this?”time.com/6216213/ukrain…

The heads of U.S. intelligence agencies are testifying to Congress about worldwide threats to national security this morning, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Includes CIA Director William Burns, FBI Director Christopher Wray, DNI Avril Haines. DNI Avril Haines says Putin's "recent and tragic invasion of Ukraine...has produced a shock to the geopolitical order with implications for the future that we are only beginning to understand."

I can’t wrap my mind around the existence of this clip. Five years later, in a much darker world

Ukraine's Ambassador to the UN read out text messages between a Russian soldier and his mother moments before he was killed. He read them in Russian.

"Mama, I'm in Ukraine. There is a real war raging here. I'm afraid. We are bombing all of the cities...even targeting civilians." Here's a transcript of a Russian soldier's last text messages to his mother that Ukraine's Ambassador to the UN just read out from screenshots at the emergency session of the UN General Assembly

New: EU commission chief announces it will “ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU,” among other measures.
 
“The state-owned RT and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war [and] toxic and harmful disinformation” This comes after Poland banned RT Thursday (following Germany’s decision to do so last month). French lawmakers asked for RT’s license to be rescinded, and British PM Boris Johnson urged the country’s media regulator to monitor RT UK for “disinformation” time.com/6151578/russia…

On call w/ reporters, senior US official says the new joint task force will “collectively hunt down the physical assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs: their yachts, jets, fancy cars and luxury homes…their ability to send their kids to fancy colleges in the West.” “We will also engage other governments to detect and disrupt the movement of ill-gotten gains and deny these individuals their ability to hide their assets in jurisdictions across the world,” the senior administration official said.

For the first time, Ukraine seems to be beating Russia at its own game on the information battlefield - because Ukrainian officials have treated it as a real front line.

Latest ⬇️

time.com/6151578/russia… In Ukrainian, English and Russian, top Ukrainian officials have relentlessly put out their own information on social media, provided regular updates, shot down rumors, and warned of new false Russian narratives before they can fully take off. time.com/6151578/russia…

Russia is ramping up campaign aimed at Ukrainian troops to "discourage them & induce surrender through disinformation," per US official.

Intel "indicates Russia is creating a disinformation campaign by publicizing false reports about the widespread surrender of Ukrainian troops" "Our information also indicates that Russia plans to threaten killing the family members of Ukrainian soldiers if they do not surrender," per US official.

Good morning from the “Defeat the Mandates” March.

According to the organizers, more than 24,000 people have said they're going to the rally. It starts at the Washington Monument and ends with speeches at the Lincoln Memorial. There’s a lot going on at today’s “Defeat the Mandates” rally in DC. To give you an idea, it was promoted on both Joe Rogan’s podcast and Steve Bannon’s.