Russian disinformation revealed – pretended to be Ukrainian activist
In the investigation conducted by the Austrian intelligence service since December, a « extensive Russian disinformation campaign » was discovered announced the country’s government on Monday.
A group led by Russian security service must have worked on disseminating disinformation in German -speaking countries since the full -scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
The Austrian newspaper Couriers Writes that the focus in the disinformation campaign should have been to disseminate a negative picture of the Ukrainian state leadership and in particular President Volodymyr Zelenskyj.
The campaign is said to have been conducted both online on social media and physically with doodles and stickers where Ukraine is linked to right -wing messages. Among other things, damage must have been carried out in Russian and Jewish symbolic sites in Austria.
« The spread of fake news and manipulated content undermines confidence in our institutions, » said Social Democratic Foreign Minister Jörg Leichtfried at a press conference.
A Bulgarian woman has been arrested on suspicion of espionage and according to the Austrian authorities she must have been in direct contact with the Russian security service. The woman has acknowledged that she worked for a group that has been posed as a Ukrainian activist group, but who, behind the scenes, spread a « negative and undemocratic picture of Ukraine and President Zelenskyj ».
The Bulgarian woman must have documented the spread of disinformation and shared the material into people in Russia and the United Kingdom. The Austrian intelligence service also confirms that the case has links to that British case of Russian espionage recently discovered. There, too, it was Bulgarian citizens who worked on orders from Russia.
The case in Austria has accelerated a domestic political debate in which several high -ranking politicians accused the right -wing party FPÖ, which became the largest in the country’s parliamentary elections with almost 29 percent of the votes last year, to spread the type of disinformation that the Bulgarian woman is suspected of spreading.
« Troll factories produce these lies, and FPÖ and the media that they finance spread them happily, » says Helmut Firestätter, which represents the Liberal Party Neos in the European Parliament.
Last year, a Other notable gripping in Austria when a former employee at the country’s security service was identified as a Russian spy.
