# Incident I00075: How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader
* **Summary:** <i>“It was one of Russia’s most overt attempts at election interference to date. Working from their headquarters in a resort hotel, the Russians published their own newspaper in the local language and hired students to write fawning articles about the president to help him win another term. Skirting electoral laws, they bought airtime on television stations and blanketed the country with billboards.<br><br> “They paid young people to attend rallies and journalists to cover them. They showed up with armed bodyguards at campaign offices to bribe challengers to drop out of the race to clear their candidate’s path.<br><br> “At Madagascar’s election commission, officials were alarmed.”</I>
| [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/world/africa/russia-madagascar-election.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/world/africa/russia-madagascar-election.html) | 2019/11/11 | Michael Schwirtz, Gaelle Borgia | New York Times | [https://web.archive.org/web/20240625161319/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/world/africa/russia-madagascar-election.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20240625161319/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/world/africa/russia-madagascar-election.html) |
| Technique | Description given for this incident |
| [T0097.110 Party Official Persona](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0097.110.md) | IT00000328 <I>“In the campaign’s final weeks, Pastor Mailhol said, the team of Russians made a request: Drop out of the race and support Mr. Rajoelina. He refused.<br><br> “The Russians made the same proposal to the history professor running for president, saying, “If you accept this deal you will have money” according to Ms. Rasamimanana, the professor’s campaign manager.<br><br> When the professor refused, she said, the Russians created a fake Facebook page that mimicked his official page and posted an announcement on it that he was supporting Mr. Rajoelina.”</i><br><br> In this example actors created online accounts styled to look like official pages to trick targets into thinking that the presidential candidate announced that they had dropped out of the election (T0097.110: Party Official Persona, T0143.003: Impersonated Persona) |
| [T0129.006 Deny Involvement](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0129.006.md) | IT00000331 <i>“Only three of the Russian operatives identified by local hires of the campaign responded to requests for comment. All acknowledged visiting Madagascar last year, but only one admitted working as a pollster on behalf of the president.<br><br> “The others said they were simply tourists. Pyotr Korolyov, described as a sociologist on one spreadsheet, spent much of the summer of 2018 and fall hunched over a computer, deep in polling data at La Résidence Ankerana, a hotel the Russians used as their headquarters, until he was hospitalized with the measles, according to one person who worked with him.<br><br> “In an email exchange, Mr. Korolyov confirmed that he had come down with the measles, but rejected playing a role in a Russian operation. He did defend the idea of one, though.<br><br> ““Russia should influence elections around the world, the same way the United States influences elections,” he wrote. “Sooner or later Russia will return to global politics as a global player,” he added. “And the American establishment will just have to accept that.””</i><br><br> This behaviour matches T0129.006: Deny Involvement because the actors contacted by journalists denied that they had participated in election interference (in spite of the evidence to the contrary). |
| [T0137 Make Money](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0137.md) | IT00000330 <I>“But while Russia’s efforts [at election interference] in the United States fit Moscow’s campaign to upend Western democracy and rattle Mr. Putin’s geopolitical rivals, the undertaking in Madagascar often seemed to have a much simpler objective: profit.<br><br> “Before the election, a Russian company that local officials and foreign diplomats say is controlled by Mr. Prigozhin acquired a major stake in a government-run company that mines chromium, a mineral valued for its use in stainless steel. The acquisition set off protests by workers complaining of unpaid wages, cancelledcanceled benefits and foreign intrusion into a sector that had been a source of national pride for Madagascar.<br><br> “It repeated a pattern in which Russia has swooped into African nations, hoping to reshape their politics for material gain. In the Central African Republic, a former Russian intelligence officer is the top security adviser to the country’s president, while companies linked to Mr. Prigozhin have spread across the nation, snapping up diamonds in both legal and illegal ways, according to government officials, warlords in the diamond trade and registration documents showing Mr. Prigozhin’s growing military and commercial footprint.<br><br> [...] “The [operation switched from supporting the incumbent candidate on realising he would lose the election]. After the Russians pirouetted to help Mr. Rajoelina — their former opponent — win the election, Mr. Prigozhin’s company was able to negotiate with the new government to keep control of the chromium mining operation, despite the worker protests, and Mr. Prigozhin’s political operatives remain stationed in the capital to this day.”</i><br><br> This behaviour matches T0137: Make Money because analysts have asserted that the identified influence operation was in part motivated by a goal to generate profit |
| [T0143.003 Impersonated Persona](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0143.003.md) | IT00000329 <I>“In the campaign’s final weeks, Pastor Mailhol said, the team of Russians made a request: Drop out of the race and support Mr. Rajoelina. He refused.<br><br> “The Russians made the same proposal to the history professor running for president, saying, “If you accept this deal you will have money” according to Ms. Rasamimanana, the professor’s campaign manager.<br><br> When the professor refused, she said, the Russians created a fake Facebook page that mimicked his official page and posted an announcement on it that he was supporting Mr. Rajoelina.”</i><br><br> In this example actors created online accounts styled to look like official pages to trick targets into thinking that the presidential candidate announced that they had dropped out of the election (T0097.110: Party Official Persona, T0143.003: Impersonated Persona) |
