Another large-scale Kremlin "troll factory" exposed: producing memes, fakes, and counterfeit Western websites

This was reported by the Radio Svoboda project Schemes.

The agency in question is the Social Design Agency (SDA), an organization sanctioned by the EU and the U.S., which, according to U.S. law enforcement, works on behalf of the Russian presidential administration.

Schemes investigators, in cooperation with a dozen European editorial offices, investigated the leak of files from the SDA. Some of the documents from this leak were published in early September by American law enforcement agencies in support of a motion to arrest the Internet domains of websites associated with the SDA.

Media Consortium sources in Western intelligence, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that they believe the files were authentic.

Investigators claim that the project is overseen by Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergey Kiriyenko. Also involved in organizing the activities of this “troll factory” is the head of the Internal Policy Department, Alexander Kharychev, and the team's product is the reference manager of the Department for the Development of Information Technology and Communication Infrastructure, Sofia Zakharova.

As stated in a non-public presentation received by journalists, the Russian Social Design Agency positions itself as an organization that provides full media support to the customer: analysis of the Western information field, identification of potential threats, proposals for countering such challenges and their implementation.

The head of the agency, Ilya Gambashidze, appears in the video wearing a hoodie with patches of “Russian ideological troops” and “commander of a special unit.”

The video presentation informs that Gambashidze's team works in three areas.

• The first is monitoring: a team of 24 employees analyzes pro-Russian and anti-Russian articles and posts by more than 1,000 opinion leaders in six languages on a daily basis and compiles reports on potential newsworthy events.
• The second is analytics: the agency's specialists study the target audience and create so-called “manuals” for performers.
• The third is creative: the authors write articles taking into account the journalistic style inherent in a particular country, and illustrators create appropriate cartoons.

In particular, in four months, from January to April 2024, Gambashidze's team produced 39,899 pieces of content. These include posts, videos and video memes, long-form and short-form articles, memes and graphics, and fake special messages. 

Forgery of official documents

SDA also works with the distribution of fake official documents. In particular, the video presentation mentioned press releases from the German Ministry of the Interior and the Polish Customs Service. 

The journalists found evidence of falsification of Ukrainian government documents in the SDA leak. In particular, the “Order from the OP (Office of the President - ed.) on cleansing operation” is an attached document allegedly from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, which contains an “order” to the heads of units and departments of the Ukrainian Armed Forces not to confirm “information about the presence of prisoners of war for exchange on board” the IL-76, which crashed in the Belgorod region of Russia in January 2024. The purpose of this fake, according to the accompanying documents, is to accuse the Ukrainian military leadership of censorship and concealing the truth about the crash.

Also in the “register of fakes and augmented reality” is a fake order allegedly issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, equating the surrender of military personnel to treason. The purpose of this fake, as stated in the description of the Russian agency's task, is to “discredit the military and political leadership of Ukraine and demoralize the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

An army of bots helps to split Ukrainian society

The documents show that SDA Russian analysts thoroughly study the information field of Ukraine, identify sensitive topics and use them to polarize society. These include mobilization, battlefield losses, restrictions on freedom of speech during martial law, reduced military aid, corruption, and counteroffensives.

Bots play an important role in spreading destructive and pro-Russian narratives in the Ukrainian segment of social media. They help SDA spread memes, caricatures, and fakes.

SDA closely monitors the activities of its bots on social media: it keeps reports that record their work: the date, the type of content that a particular bot posted, the account it used, the platform on which the information was shared, etc.

According to the reporting file, bots also leave comments (text and memes) on posts by Ukrainian government agencies, law enforcement agencies, politicians, and Ukrainian media.

In total, according to the document “Statistics of Center C's work” from the SDA leak, from January to April 2024, Gambashidze's team published almost 34 million comments. 

Fictional stories about Ukrainians for Europeans

Leaked documents reveal that Gambashidze's team creates and distributes fabricated videos, styled to resemble Western media reports, on social media with the aim of discrediting Ukraine and its people. One such story, purportedly from the German outlet Bild, claimed that Ukrainian refugees accidentally set fire to the house of their German hosts while attempting to burn a Russian flag. However, in May 2022, fact-checkers from the StopFake project debunked the story, confirming that it was fabricated, the fire incident was fictitious, and the video was compiled from old footage dating back to 2013 and 2021. Despite this, the story was widely spread by Russian-language Telegram channels and those targeting European audiences, with the help of bot farms.

The same file also marks as completed other “tasks” aimed at discrediting Ukrainians abroad. In particular, the publication of videos on Telegram channels in German and English showing, for example, a Ukrainian in Naples allegedly deciding to rob a store or refugees from Ukraine allegedly forcing a bar visitor to dance hopak (Ukrainian traditional dance - ed.). At the same time, the leaked documents contain detailed instructions on how to style the fakes to look like certain Western outlets.

Attempt to influence the EU elections

The SDA also tried to influence the EU parliamentary elections in June 2024. The goal was to favor right-wing forces that would promote pro-Russian narratives.

The campaign consisted of four main points: 

• to accuse politicians in power of unjustified fear-mongering, in particular, about a possible Russian attack on the EU;
• to criticize support for gender equality and LGBT rights as making “our children go crazy”
• undermine the current economic policy by referring to high inflation and unemployment;
• accuse the EU globalists of totalitarianism and militarization, “just like in Ukraine.”

The task was to be accomplished by spreading fake news through social media in various forms.

As a result, despite the fact that the majority of seats in the European Parliament were won by democratic forces, the ratings of the right-wing parties also increased. In the leaked documents, Gambashidze's team takes credit for this.

“In general, the overall success of the rights in the European elections is perceived today all over the world as a success of Russian foreign policy and even more so, a success of Russian propaganda,” one of the documents says.

Promotion of Viktor Medvedchuk's political movement “Other Ukraine”

The SDA goal was to position Medvedchuk as a “consistent fighter for the peaceful future of Ukraine” who “talks about the benefits of starting a peaceful dialogue as an alternative to a possible nuclear war.” Another message to be spread was that “Ukraine should stop being used as a testing ground for Western weapons.” To promote this movement, Gambashidze's team proposed: creating analytical materials, writing texts for the website, publications in the media, and working on social media, which included “deleting comments that contradict the groups' policies” and “comments in support and defense of VM (Viktor Medvedchuk - ed.) and his Movement.”

The team's analysts noted that Medvedchuk's personality evokes mostly negative comments on the Russian social network Vkontakte. In particular, the document indicates 76% of negative comments under Medvedchuk's statement about the meeting of the leaders of the PRC and the Republic of Belarus in Beijing. 

Despite this, it seems that SDA continued to work for the “Other Ukraine”. The documents, in particular, contain plans to promote the organization's website through opinion leaders, bots, and social media advertising.

The documents contain evidence that Gambashidze's political technologists are behind both the launch and promotion of the so-called political movement of the pro-Kremlin politician and traitor Viktor Medvedchuk.

The file “Other_Ukraine_Comprehensive_support_on_the_Internet” from the leaked SDA file formulates the main tasks, indicates the target audience of the project, its ideology, areas and types of work, and performance indicators.