July 8, These assets were used to complement and promote a pro-Russian Telegram channel launched in April , which has now grown to nearly 12, members. Its Telegram channel, which launched on April 18, continues to post pro-Kremlin content about the invasion of Ukraine in French. At the time of publication, the channel had 11, followers. Content from the Telegram channel appeared to be copied directly from a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel with links to the Kremlin propaganda website RusVesna.
The network coincides with increased influence efforts by Russia focused on justifying and winning support β or at least neutralizing public opinion β in the Global South for its war of aggression against Ukraine. While the DFRLab has not linked the network directly to the Kremlin, the tactics and narratives correlate with previous efforts by Russia and its supporters. They also noted that the primary page used by the network was de-platformed in June after its systems automatically detected it.
Counter to previous engagements with the DFRLab, Meta inadvertently removed the network during the investigation, preventing DFRLab from fully archiving and analyzing it. Neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso have already called for Russian assistance in fighting Islamist insurgents. The first page relating to Ukraine was created by the network on March Prior to its removal, the DFRLab noted an email address listed in the about section containing the surname Kadyrov, the family name of Ramzan Kadyrov, the despotic head of the Chechen Republic.
Chechnya has assisted Russian forces in the invasion of Ukraine. There is no indication the email address was associated with an authentic member of the Kadyrov family, and was likely an homage to them. The name Kadyrov was also used by a sockpuppet Facebook account. According to Illia Ponomarenko , a defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent , Tushayev was killed in action in during fighting in Hostomel in late February His death has not been confirmed.
The Igor Kadyrov profile had just 77 Facebook friends, including similarly empty accounts, some of which used stolen images of adult entertainment actors as their profile pictures. It appeared the primary use of the Igor Kadyrov profile was to act as an administrator for a private Facebook group with over 62, members. It is unclear how many of its 62, members joined prior to the name change, potentially subjected to a bait-and-switch operation by the page owner.
