Journalists have uncovered a Russian propaganda campaign with thousands of fake TikTok accounts spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine and Ukrainian officials, including former Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, the BBC reports, UNN reports.
Details
"The BBC has uncovered a Russian propaganda campaign with thousands of fake TikTok accounts spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine. The videos regularly attract millions of views and have the obvious aim of undermining Western support," the publication writes.
The videos mainly promoted false claims that Ukrainian officials and their relatives had bought luxury cars or villas abroad after Russia's invasion in February 2022.
Oleksiy Reznikov's daughter, Anastasia Steinhaus, told BBC journalists that fake TikTok videos played a role in her father's dismissal from the post of defense minister.
One such video, according to Steinhaus, was about her buying a villa in Madrid, Spain.
"Steinhaus initially dismissed the video as a one-off, but the next morning she was sent a similar video on TikTok claiming to have bought a villa on the French Riviera," the publication adds.
She said she does not own real estate in Spain or France or "anywhere outside of Ukraine," and noted that other videos were directly aimed at her father.
BBC Verify tracked down photos of the houses in Madrid and Cannes on two local real estate sites, and both were still for sale.
Reznikov's daughter also noted that the videos she regularly receives are from a large Russian network of fake TikTok accounts that pose as real users from Germany, France, Poland, Israel and Ukraine.
Using hashtag searches and TikTok's own recommendations, BBC Verify was able to track down hundreds of similar videos targeting dozens of Ukrainian officials. The accounts that posted them used stolen profile photos of celebrities including Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Colin Farrell, the BBC notes.
The accounts reportedly posted only one video each, a "new tactic aimed at avoiding detection and manipulating the platform's system to recommend videos to users.
"It appears that the efforts were coordinated: sometimes videos were published by different accounts on the same day and had identical or very similar scenarios," the publication emphasizes.
SEE ALSO: GUR warns of disinformation campaign in global media against Ukraine
Many of the videos analyzed by BBC Verify targeted Reznikov, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other Ukrainian officials, portraying them as obsessed with money and indifferent to ordinary Ukrainians or the war.
They avoided direct accusations of wrongdoing, but implied that the politicians had bought luxury property or goods during the war - allegations that, when checked, always turned out to be false.
"When we reported our findings to TikTok, a spokesperson said: "We are constantly and relentlessly pursuing those who try to influence our community through deceptive behavior, and we have removed a covert influence operation from Russia as part of an investigation initiated by TikTok and joined by the BBC," the publication concludes.