Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Catch all till 2017)

[AdamG]

Russian Web Brigade?

"The web brigades(Russian: Веб-бригады )[1] are alleged astroturfing groups linked to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. They are purported to be teams of commentators that participate in political blogs and Internet forums to promote disinformation and prevent free discussions of undesirable subjects"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

[Firn]

Having read my fair share of articles there is a surprising amount of much-'liked' comments on quite prominent newspapers which seem to come straight out of the Kremlin, with a free use of 'Nazi', 'fascists' and so forth. In some occasions other posters commented that the writer stucking to the Kremlin line had only joined very recently and devoted all of his posts to the Ukrainian crisis. I don't doubt that there is a fair number of guys working out of their own initiative but if we consider that the Kremlin has also payed Russian 'tourists', 'self-defense' forces, and funded anti-Western protesters it seems very unlikely that we don't see much of the same in Cyberspace.

Exactly this need to pay for most of the supporting actions is a quite striking difference to the vastly bottom-up nature of the Ukrainian maidan movement. Then again this has been the general political problem, as I have mentioned before, for Putin relative to the West, especially in regard to eastern European countries. The European attraction is a massive, vastly natural headwind for Russia in this struggle. It has to work very hard, with all sorts of clever actions, just to not lose ground.

[davidbfpo]

Earlier I posted this: A number of posts have been and are in the process of being moved here, from the main Ukraine thread. They refer to suspected information operations, in particular an exchange between Mirhond and Outlaw09.

Update: I have given up. It is impossible to seperate out the posts, they are spread over a month amidst four hundred posts.

[Bill Moore]

David, welcome back from your travels.

Recommend renaming this Russian Cyber Operations since it will cover much more than Ukraine. Just let the thread build naturally. There is enough out there.

Added: Title slightly different now Russian Cyber & Info Ops (Ukraine & more). Sunday breakfast renewed my energy and a small number of recent posts on the Ukraine thread have been moved here.