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30 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
# Incident I00072: Behind the Dutch Terror Threat Video: The St. Petersburg "Troll Factory" Connection
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* **Summary:** Bellingcat analyses the publication and propagation of a fabricated video:<br><br> <i>“At 13:30:09 GMT on 18 January 2016, a new YouTube channel called ПАТРИОТ (“Patriot”) uploaded its first video, titled (in Ukrainian) “Appeal of AZOV fighters to the Netherlands on a referendum about EU – Ukraine.” The video depicts six soldiers holding guns, supposedly from the notorious far-right, ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion, speaking in Ukrainian before burning a Dutch flag. In the video, the supposed Azov fighters threaten to conduct terrorist attacks in the Netherlands if the April 6 referendum is rejected. There are numerous examples of genuine Azov Battalion soldiers saying or doing reprehensible things, such as making severely anti-Semitic comments and having Nazi tattoos. However, most of these verified examples come from individual fighters, while the video with the Dutch flag being burned and terror threats supposedly comes as an official statement of the battalion.<br><br> The video has been proven as a fake, and is just one of many fake videos surrounding the Azov Battalion. This post [examines] the way in which the video originated and was spread. After open source analysis, it becomes clear that this video was initially spread and likely created by the same network of accounts and news sites that are operated by the infamous “St. Petersburg Troll Factories” of the Internet Research Agency and its sister organization, the Federal News Agency (FAN). The same tactics can be seen in a recent report from Andrey Soshnikov of the BBC, in which he revealed that a fake video showing what was supposedly a U.S. soldier shooting a Quran was created and spread by this “troll factory.”</i>
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* **incident type**:
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* **Year started:**
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* **Found via:**
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| Reference | Pub Date | Authors | Org | Archive |
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| --------- | -------- | ------- | --- | ------- |
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| [https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azov-video/](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azov-video/) | 2016/04/03 | - | bellingcat | [https://web.archive.org/web/20240527150851/https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azov-video/](https://web.archive.org/web/20240527150851/https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azov-video/) |
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| Technique | Description given for this incident |
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| --------- | ------------------------- |
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| [T0097.204 Think Tank Persona](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0097.204.md) | IT00000244 <I>“The creator of Geopolitika[.]ru is Aleksandr Dugin, who was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury in 2015 for his role in the Eurasian Youth Union “for being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”<br><br> [...]<br><br> “Currently, the website geopolika[.]ru redirects directly to another partner website, Katehon.<br><br> “Katehon poses itself as a think tank focused on geopolitics in an English edition of its website. In contrast, in Russian, it states its aim to develop “ideological, political, diplomatic, economic and military strategy for Russia of the future” with a special role of religion. The president of Katehon’s supervisory board is Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian millionaire with connections to the Russian orthodox church and presidential administration, who founded Tsargrad TV, a known source of disinformation. Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the European Union in 2014 for material support and financial backing of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Another known figure from the board is Sergei Glaziev, former advisor to Putin in 2012–2019. Dugin is also on the board in the Russian edition of the website, whereas he is omitted in English.”</i><br><br>In this example a domain managed by an actor previously sanctioned by the US department of treasury has been reconfigured to redirect to another website; Katehon (T0149.004: Redirecting Domain Asset, T0150.004: Repurposed Asset).<br><br> Katehon presents itself as a geopolitical think tank in English, but does not maintain this persona when presenting itself to a Russian speaking audience (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona, T0152.004: Website Asset, T0155.004: Geoblocked Asset). |
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| [T0149.004 Redirecting Domain Asset](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0149.004.md) | IT00000243 <I>“The creator of Geopolitika[.]ru is Aleksandr Dugin, who was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury in 2015 for his role in the Eurasian Youth Union “for being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”<br><br> [...]<br><br> “Currently, the website geopolika[.]ru redirects directly to another partner website, Katehon.<br><br> “Katehon poses itself as a think tank focused on geopolitics in an English edition of its website. In contrast, in Russian, it states its aim to develop “ideological, political, diplomatic, economic and military strategy for Russia of the future” with a special role of religion. The president of Katehon’s supervisory board is Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian millionaire with connections to the Russian orthodox church and presidential administration, who founded Tsargrad TV, a known source of disinformation. Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the European Union in 2014 for material support and financial backing of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Another known figure from the board is Sergei Glaziev, former advisor to Putin in 2012–2019. Dugin is also on the board in the Russian edition of the website, whereas he is omitted in English.”</i><br><br>In this example a domain managed by an actor previously sanctioned by the US department of treasury has been reconfigured to redirect to another website; Katehon (T0149.004: Redirecting Domain Asset, T0150.004: Repurposed Asset).<br><br> Katehon presents itself as a geopolitical think tank in English, but does not maintain this persona when presenting itself to a Russian speaking audience (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona, T0152.004: Website Asset, T0155.004: Geoblocked Asset). |
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| [T0150.004 Repurposed Asset](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0150.004.md) | IT00000345 <I>“The creator of Geopolitika[.]ru is Aleksandr Dugin, who was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury in 2015 for his role in the Eurasian Youth Union “for being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”<br><br> [...]<br><br> “Currently, the website geopolika[.]ru redirects directly to another partner website, Katehon.<br><br> “Katehon poses itself as a think tank focused on geopolitics in an English edition of its website. In contrast, in Russian, it states its aim to develop “ideological, political, diplomatic, economic and military strategy for Russia of the future” with a special role of religion. The president of Katehon’s supervisory board is Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian millionaire with connections to the Russian orthodox church and presidential administration, who founded Tsargrad TV, a known source of disinformation. Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the European Union in 2014 for material support and financial backing of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Another known figure from the board is Sergei Glaziev, former advisor to Putin in 2012–2019. Dugin is also on the board in the Russian edition of the website, whereas he is omitted in English.”</i><br><br>In this example a domain managed by an actor previously sanctioned by the US department of treasury has been reconfigured to redirect to another website; Katehon (T0149.004: Redirecting Domain Asset, T0150.004: Repurposed Asset).<br><br> Katehon presents itself as a geopolitical think tank in English, but does not maintain this persona when presenting itself to a Russian speaking audience (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona, T0152.004: Website Asset, T0155.004: Geoblocked Asset). |
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| [T0155.004 Geoblocked Asset](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0155.004.md) | IT00000346 <I>“The creator of Geopolitika[.]ru is Aleksandr Dugin, who was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury in 2015 for his role in the Eurasian Youth Union “for being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”<br><br> [...]<br><br> “Currently, the website geopolika[.]ru redirects directly to another partner website, Katehon.<br><br> “Katehon poses itself as a think tank focused on geopolitics in an English edition of its website. In contrast, in Russian, it states its aim to develop “ideological, political, diplomatic, economic and military strategy for Russia of the future” with a special role of religion. The president of Katehon’s supervisory board is Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian millionaire with connections to the Russian orthodox church and presidential administration, who founded Tsargrad TV, a known source of disinformation. Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the European Union in 2014 for material support and financial backing of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Another known figure from the board is Sergei Glaziev, former advisor to Putin in 2012–2019. Dugin is also on the board in the Russian edition of the website, whereas he is omitted in English.”</i><br><br>In this example a domain managed by an actor previously sanctioned by the US department of treasury has been reconfigured to redirect to another website; Katehon (T0149.004: Redirecting Domain Asset, T0150.004: Repurposed Asset).<br><br> Katehon presents itself as a geopolitical think tank in English, but does not maintain this persona when presenting itself to a Russian speaking audience (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona, T0152.004: Website Asset, T0155.004: Geoblocked Asset). |
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