Russian Disinformation Campaign Helped Spread False Claims About Yovanovitch: Report
CONNECTING THE DOTS
A social-media analysis firm dubbed Graphika has provided the first evidence that the same network of accounts responsible for spreading disinformation before the 2016 election was also involved in a smear campaign against the former American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was ousted earlier this year. Graphika linked the Russian disinformation campaign with posts that purported to show a list of people Yovanovitch told Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko not to prosecute. The Hill published an article on March 20 that said Yovanovitch gave Lutsenko the list in their first meeting, which the State Department called “an outright fabrication.” The disinformation posts circulated on the website Medium and soon after spread to other self-publishing platforms globally. Graphika identified 44 stories launched by the Russian operation between October 2016 and October 2019, and described many of them as “demonstrably false, based on forged documents or non-existent interviews,” adding that, “all were amplified by networks of fake accounts across a wide range of social platforms.”