Russian internet trolls are posing as American citizens and creating social media content in an attempt to undermine support for the Ukrainian people and influence American aid distribution, a new report revealed.
Moscow public relations professionals, including Ilya Gambashidze, directed trolls to write internet comments with "no more than 200 characters in the name of a resident of a suburb of a major city."
The United States previously sanctioned Gambashidze for his role in a "persistent foreign malign influence campaign."
A hypothetical American, created by Russian bots would be someone who "doesn't support the military aid that the U.S. is giving Ukraine and considers that the money should be spent defending America's borders and not Ukraine's. He sees that Biden's policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse," the Washington Post reported.
The Washington Post was given more than 100 documents that were written and distributed between May 2022 and August 2023, indicating that Russia is continuing to use propaganda against American citizens - much in the same way that it did during the 2016 presidential election.
The Kremlin documents characterize Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as corrupt, while also drawing attention to the ongoing migrant crisis. This comes as Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to clash over American support for Ukraine. Conservative hardliners have broken ranks with Speaker Mike Johnson over the issue, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene describing funding Ukraine as "egregious."
In at least one instance, pro-Russia factions were able to successfully disseminate a fake news story that claimed Zelenskyy bought two yachts with American aid money. The story was even shared on social media by Greene. North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis subsequently told CNN that aid distribution talks stalled in Congress, at least partially because politicians were worried that "people will buy yachts with this money."
Trolls are also encouraged to bring up funding border security as a more important priority for the U.S. and suggest that "white Americans" will be the primary losers in foreign aid distribution.
"It is Russia's top priority to stop the weapons, so they are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks," a Republican staffer told the Washington Post. "We are seeing a broad-based campaign that has multiple lines of effort, some of which work better than others. The Russians don't care. They are just trying to seed the environment."
