These narratives build on long-running Russian influence operations in Africa, where Putin has been attempting to revive his country’s Cold War era diplomatic footprint and where many people depend on social media for news. Dr Grossman and DFR have tracked several covert campaigns probably tied to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef” who is accused by US prosecutors of interfering in the 2016 election via an infamous “troll farm” known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA). Prigozhin is also alleged to have ties to the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary group that operated in Syria and the Central African Republic, and has numerous mining interests throughout Africa.
“These [Facebook] pages produced almost universally positive coverage of Russia’s activities in these countries and disparaged the UN, France, Turkey, Qatar, and the Libyan Government of National Accord, most often while purporting to be local news sources,” said a 2019 Stanford report. In South Sudan, IRA-linked networks have praised Russian bases and aid packages from Prigozhin, while in Mali, they pressed for Russian troops to replace French ones in battles with Islamist groups (France eventually withdrew).
In the Central African Republic, Carvin says, the Wagner Group even “became a meme”, celebrated as a macho alternative to the neo-colonialist French. So the big question is how much of this has happened naturally and how much of this has been due to Russian influence operations.
All these nations joined India in abstaining from the UN vote against Russia. Dr Grossman thinks it’s unlikely that information warfare played a large role in that, suspecting instead that Russia is targeting countries where it already has a favourable audience. Yet such campaigns may help keep nations on side against Nato pressure by manufacturing the impression of popular support.
China has deployed its own sophisticated propaganda and censorship apparatus to echo Russia’s perspective. Partisan posts backing Ukraine, and some backing Russia, have been swept from social networks, while both domestic and overseas state media outlets have avoided blaming Russia for the war and occasionally repeated Russian hoaxes.
“They follow the guidelines set by the Party and generally follow the line of reporting by [state news agency] Xinhua, which presents Russia in a positive light,” says Prof Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute. “It reflects China’s real position which is that it outwardly proclaims ‘neutrality’ in the conflict but in reality supports Russia and Putin.”
At least broadcast TV is easier to monitor than social networks, which tend to section off their users in bubbles of shared culture that see totally different information on their timelines. While Twitter is largely public and allows mass data collection by academics, Meta has historically baulked at giving researchers such access. The private messaging app Telegram – widely used in Russia and Ukraine – is even harder to study.
Indeed, Carvin says that RT, which retains a massive following in Latin America, is increasingly urging Spanish-speaking users to join its Telegram channels as tech firms and the EU crack down on it elsewhere. Russia’s embassies in Ethiopia and Uganda have done the same, though their channels only have about 2,300 members between them.
Still, Dr Grossman argues that it’s right to focus on Ukraine for now, because that is where the info-war can most directly affect the physical war. The Zelenskyy deepfake was “kind of janky”, she says, but what if it had actually worked? “The potential impact there is just so severe.”
