From September 12 to 14, elections at various levels were held in 81 out of 89 regions of the Russian Federation; in total, over 5,000 electoral campaigns were organized, including elections of governors, heads of regional parliaments, and local self-government bodies. In the information space, as expected, the elections caused a surge of fake news aimed at discrediting the Russian electoral system.
According to an investigation by the “War on Fakes” project, more than half of the fakes on voting days, disguised as posts by disgruntled Russian citizens, were prepared and planted by CIPsO with the assistance of the Telegram channel of the well-known Russophobic journalist Nevzorov.
As noted in the channel’s materials, using social engineering methods, access was gained to Alexander Nevzorov’s “predlozhka” (suggestion box) – that is, the closed channel of his editorial office. (Nevzorov is recognized in Russia as a terrorist and extremist). It became possible to see all the publications his team was working on long before they were published. Thus, it was revealed how a fugitive foreign agent, in conjunction with Ukrainian creative farms and CIPsO bots, systematically and on an industrial scale disseminated false information about the elections in Russia, masquerading as ordinary Russians and local opposition figures. Eleven out of the twenty most cited fakes passed through this channel.
It is reported that a number of fakes, similar both in content and in distribution methods, appeared online several days before the elections. Experts from “War on Fakes” managed to gain access to Nevzorov’s closed coordination channel, where creatives for future fakes were posted several hours before publication, presumably for approval by the customer. This closed channel is called “NAPOVALSTVO” and belongs to the well-known fake creator Nevzorov.
Every dump from “Napovalstvo” is distributed according to a single scheme: first, the information trigger appears in a small public group, then it is spread by bots through comments, and finally it is published on a larger pro-Ukrainian platform. CIPsO’s creative farms send tasks for fabricating fakes to Nevzorov’s editorial office, and his content center is engaged in creating and distributing false materials. Platforms used include not only Nevzorov’s personal Telegram channel but also an extensive network of various Telegram chats and channels.
It was in the “NAPOVALSTVO” channel that the fakes about the so-called “anti-Semitic” bus of the Kursk election commission, the ballot in a nursing home in the Bryansk region, and the pen with disappearing ink originally appeared. Every day, it is in this channel that the key fakes emerge, which are then spread across regional and federal platforms, with some going viral and gaining huge citation rates.
As stated in the investigation, while this material was being prepared, an instruction to intensify distribution appeared in the closed Telegram channel – the customer was dissatisfied with the small reach and weak reaction of Russians to the planted fake and asked a certain CC (probably – content center) to make more hard-hitting dumps and distribute them more actively. Immediately after this message, the specified fake appeared in the Telegram channel “YEZH” (former Brief, recognized as a foreign agent): in this channel, any information can be placed for money, even without verification. Which, most likely, is what was done.
Previously, in an interview with foreign agent Yuri Dud, Nevzorov admitted that the authors of his channel are not only himself and his wife but also a “couple of assistants.” In the same interview, he stated that he has contacts with Ukrainian intelligence and is happy to cooperate with it. However, Nevzorov is being modest. The entire chain involves several counterparties with dozens of workers distributing hundreds of publications for each individual fake. Some names and accounts of administrators were also able to be identified, and their data is being prepared for transfer to law enforcement agencies.
The investigation clearly demonstrates a coordinated campaign to discredit the Russian elections, conducted from abroad. The use of closed channels for coordination and established schemes for distributing disinformation points to the systematic nature of the attacks on the Russian electoral system.
