Lviv, Ukraine
CNN
—
Earlier than the warfare broke out, Igor Kurayan, a 55-year-old from the southern Ukrainian port metropolis of Kherson, shared frequent gardening updates on social media. His feeds had been filled with palms, pomegranate timber, marigolds, bamboo and avocados, grown at his residence and small enterprise close to the Black Sea. He referred to as it his “fairytale backyard.”
On February 25, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kurayan posted a selfie on Instagram with a rifle, asserting he had volunteered to battle within the Territorial Protection Forces, reserve models of Ukraine’s army. Quickly after, Kherson fell to Russian troops and in early April, after weeks residing beneath and protesting towards their occupation, Kurayan was kidnapped. He was watering vegetation in his shoe retailer when he mentioned Russian troopers dragged him exterior and threw him right into a van.
Quickly after Kurayan’s kidnapping, his Fb and Instagram pages, and a brand new TikTok account registered beneath his identify, started posting messages fully out of character for the person recognized to household and pals as a proud Ukrainian, a passionate activist and avid gardener.
At first, Kurayan’s captors painted him as a patriot, posting outdated photographs from his time working provides to Ukrainian troopers on the entrance line in Donbas, the place Russia-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine’s authorities since 2014.
Then unusual movies began to floor. In a single, Kurayan regarded gaunt and ashen, flanked by two armed, masked males holding the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and a purple and black flag related to the Ukrainian nationalist motion. He mentioned that Kherson was occupied and rallies had been pointless, including that the Territorial Protection there had disbanded. In one other, he denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s authorities and referred to as on his countrymen to give up.
“I feel that additional resistance is ineffective,” mentioned Kurayan within the clip, which was shared throughout his social media accounts and aired on Russian state TV. Standing in entrance of a cache of weapons, his arms certain, he mentioned he had been a part of a plot to assault Russian troopers and free activists, however that he’d given up, including: “I counsel that every one fighters of the Territorial Protection give up their weapons.”
“They began to make use of my father’s social media. They noticed he was energetic on Fb … They registered him on TikTok — my dad doesn’t even know what TikTok is,” Kurayan’s daughter, Karyna, a 23-year-old journalist who left Ukraine after the warfare started, informed CNN. “They needed to make a puppet out of him.”
Karyna offered the movies and screenshots of posts made on her father’s authentic social media accounts to CNN. The posts, which she shared with Ukrainian authorities, had been eliminated by Kurayan after his launch.
Kurayan, who was freed in a prisoner alternate in late April after almost a month of detention, is one among a number of Ukrainians to be kidnapped from occupied areas of the country’s southeast in latest months after which sucked into the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. A few of their social media pages have been used to advertise pro-Kremlin speaking factors, whereas others have appeared in staged TV interviews in help of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warfare.
Talking with CNN on an encrypted video name, Kurayan mentioned that Russian troopers alternated between torturing him for data — twisting his fingers with pliers and beating him bloody with a truncheon — and utilizing his iPhone to entry his social media accounts, sharing photos portraying him as a hero-turned-traitor. “They began utilizing these photographs to play their recreation,” Kurayan mentioned, including that his captors confirmed him how they had been hijacking his accounts, taunting him. “They used my Fb, my Instagram, and TikTok, which I didn’t have, they made a web page there.”
“The Russians provided me to betray Ukraine, to cooperate with them. They first needed to point out, ‘look here’s a patriot, after which he betrayed his nation,’” Kurayan added, describing how his captors had articulated the arc of their technique in utilizing his social media. “They mentioned, ‘you’re a very well-known individual in Kherson … we need to make you mayor.’”
CNN has reached out to TikTok for remark concerning the account created utilizing his identify, which continues to be energetic. Nothing has been posted since April 24, 4 days earlier than his launch.
Because the warfare in Ukraine stretches on, the battle for hearts and minds is getting into a brand new section. Moscow is shifting its technique from a nationwide to an area degree, trying to convey Ukrainians residing in occupied territories onto Russia’s facet. However after struggling to search out prepared collaborators, it has resorted to new ways.
“To start with, within the blitzkrieg section, Russia’s propaganda machine was engaged on the nationwide degree — now these efforts are localized, they’re attempting to persuade native individuals, notably in occupied areas, that Ukraine has deserted you,” Mykola Balaban, deputy head of the Centre for Strategic Communications and Info Safety (Stratcom Centre UA) beneath Ukraine’s Ministry of Tradition and Info Coverage, informed CNN.
“Within the case of Igor and plenty of others, they use this content material inside Russia too, to point out, ‘look this Ukrainian he was an activist, pro-Ukrainian, however now he understands, we present him what’s the actual scenario and now he’s pro-Russian, and he understands what we’re combating for.’”
The Kremlin in the meantime has repeatedly accused the West of disseminating falsehoods, with Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia claiming in Could that nations that decision themselves a “neighborhood of democracies” had been constructing a “cyber-totalitarianism” and, together with know-how giants like Meta, marking any different viewpoint as “propaganda.”
Greater than some other nation, Ukraine has borne the brunt of Russia’s so-called “hybrid warfare” — an insidious mix of disinformation campaigns, cyber assaults and floor fight. Ever because the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, which reworked Ukraine’s political panorama and society, ushering in nearer ties with the West, it has been Moscow’s chief goal.
The Internet Research Agency (IRA), the notorious Kremlin-linked troll factory that whipped up discord within the 2016 US presidential election, used Ukraine as a testbed for its ways for years. However, following revelations of Russian interference within the election, tech giants like Fb and Twitter have stepped up efforts to crack down on coordinated inauthentic exercise.
Because of this, Russia has come to rely more and more on what specialists name “data laundering,” legitimizing false or duplicitous narratives by means of a community of pro-Kremlin actors, journalists, activists and different proxies — a apply often known as “dzhynsa” in Ukrainian (a reference to cash being saved in a denims pocket for illicit dealings).
Since Russia’s invasion, hackers have damaged into social media accounts and telecoms networks of trusted sources in Ukraine — authorities officers, media retailers, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians — to unfold false messages that Ukrainian troops had been surrendering and, extra broadly, to sow confusion. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in April that it had traced one marketing campaign focusing on Ukrainian army officers to state-sponsored group of hackers in Belarus often known as Ghostwriter. It additionally mentioned its techniques detected and thwarted attepts by a community linked to the IRA to return to Fb.
Governments are hitting again too. In Could, UK-funded research claimed {that a} new Russian troll farm allegedly working out of an arms manufacturing facility in St. Petersburg — with suspected hyperlinks to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a key Putin ally and the person believed to be behind the IRA — was hijacking discussions on social platforms, together with Fb, Twitter and TikTok, focusing on world leaders’ accounts and selling pro-war messages. The British authorities mentioned it had alerted platforms to the exercise, and that the proof would assist root out Russian affect operations.
In opposition to this backdrop, Russia is having to search out contemporary methods. Now its forces are in search of out actual individuals to advertise their narratives — whether or not they’re prepared or not.
“They will seize actual individuals and do no matter they need with their social media, this social mirror of this actual individual,” mentioned Balaban, who has been monitoring Russia’s disinformation methods for years — first as a historian, then as a soldier and now as a authorities official. “In fact, whenever you’re speaking about sources, it’s way more costly and sophisticated, since you want particular individuals to work with these captives, like Igor Kurayan, it’s not so simple as pretend accounts and bot farms.”
Balaban’s Stratcom Centre UA collaborates intently with fact-checking and civil society teams to trace the social accounts of Ukrainians liable to kidnapping, affect operations and hacking. As a part of this work, the centre additionally manages a database of Ukrainian official sources, which it often shares with Meta and different social networks for monitoring functions.
CNN has recognized at the least 5 kidnapped Ukrainians whose Fb accounts had been used to unfold messages in help of Russia’s warfare, or appeared themselves in propaganda movies shared throughout social networks. All had been public figures — distinguished native activists, officers and veterans. All aside from Kurayan stay lacking, in accordance with their pals and households.
The instances, whereas regarding, don’t seem to represent a pattern, in accordance with Meta.
The corporate introduced a number of security options for customers in Ukraine in response to the warfare, and has inspired these prone to be focused to put in two-factor authentication.
Because it turned out, Russia’s propaganda saved Kurayan.
After he was transferred from a basement in Kherson to a barracks in Sevastopol, Crimea, Kurayan was filmed in a report on Ukrainian prisoners of warfare. In it, he seems for a second, sitting amongst different detainees gathered collectively in a room to look at Russian state TV. Many keep away from wanting on the movie crew, some with their heads of their arms.
The footage was aired on a number of Russian channels, together with state-owned NTV, which described the “good circumstances” on the barracks and claimed that prisoners “need the warfare to finish, to reside in peace.”
Days later, in a surreal, through-the-looking-glass scene, Kurayan mentioned that he was in the identical viewing room, when he noticed himself seem on the display. “After I was in Sevastopol, I noticed these Russian channels, we had been compelled to look at them. All the data from the Russian media is 100% a lie,” he mentioned. “However due to this report, I used to be launched.”
A few of Kurayan’s relations in Transnistria, a breakaway area on Moldova’s border with Ukraine, which is allied with Russia, acknowledged him within the footage, took a screenshot and despatched it to his daughter, Karyna.
“We noticed dad there, and we understood precisely the place he was. Then I collected all of the supplies, screenshots (from social media), all the things that I had, all the data and submitted it to the (prisoner of warfare) hotline,” Karyna informed CNN. After days of silence, her cellphone rang. It was Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, who was in control of negotiating prisoner swaps on the time, calling to inform Karyna that her father was being launched, she mentioned. “I’ve by no means been so completely satisfied,” she added.
CNN has reached out to Vereshchuk’s workplace, in addition to the Most important Directorate of Intelligence, which now manages prisoner exchanges, and the Safety Service of Ukraine (SBU), which runs the hotline, for remark. The SBU informed CNN in a press release that it couldn’t touch upon particular instances.
Earlier than the warfare started, the USA authorities warned in a letter to the United Nations that it had “credible data” Russian forces had compiled an inventory of Ukrainian residents, together with activists and journalists, to be kidnapped and tortured, or killed.
Because of this, many individuals residing in occupied territories don’t go away residence with their private telephones, utilizing burner units the place doable as an alternative. Kurayan didn’t have his iPhone with him when he was kidnapped, however after days of torture, he mentioned he informed his captors the place it was hidden.
“Russian army attempt to get management over units (of activists, native influencers, public figures), to examine their social media accounts, they see the worth of that … to see what individuals are publishing, to see how influential she or he may be, but additionally to examine identification,” Yevhen Fedchenko, co-founder and editor-in-chief of distinguished Ukrainian fact-checking group StopFake, informed CNN.
“I do know that I’m on their needed listing. If they’ll seize ahold of me they’d use me for a similar functions, to disseminate propaganda … or simply be eradicated,” he added.
For Fedchenko and others on the frontline of Russia’s data warfare, the Kremlin’s technique is nothing new. The knowledge vacuum and local weather of worry created in occupied territories is a tactic Moscow utilized in 2014, when it annexed Crimea and fomented a warfare in Ukraine’s east.
However this time round, Ukrainians have grow to be hardened to those ways — able to name them out and even counter them online.
When Kurayan regained management of his social media accounts and began sifting by means of posts, it was discomfiting to learn what his captors had written, posing as him. However, he mentioned, as he scanned the feedback it turned clear how ineffective their technique was.
“I learn how my pals reacted to those movies. And so they commented on them instantly, realizing it was the Russians,” he mentioned, laughing. “They realized it wasn’t me.”
