Russian bots found to be spreading anti-Ukraine disinformation

Russian automated bot farms have been spreading false rumours about Ukraine in order to sow panic amongst the Ukrainian people.

According to the news service RFERL, the announcement stated that the network was used to pump “fake information about the situation in Ukraine, incite protests, scare the public, send notices of bomb threats at critical infrastructure sites,” in addition to trolling Ukrainian government officials.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSB) took down a bot farm in Lviv it said was capable of deploying up to 18,000 fake accounts. Another smaller bot farm that reportedly used 7,000 accounts to post fake information on Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber was also discovered.

Facebook parent company Meta also shut down a fake, pro-Russian influence campaign attempting to spread anti-Ukrainian propaganda using dozens of AI-generated fake profiles.