Two 'Russian Influence' Campaigns Claim Victory - One Is Real, The Other One Fake

moon of alabama

Two new 'Russian' campaigns claim victory in their disinformation acts against the 'west'. One is real and the other one is fake. But - as usual by now - 'western' media mistake one for the other. For them the real one is fake and the fake one real^*.

Proud Bear, a collective of GRU spies, celebrates its success in arranging Britain's exit from the European Union. It rented billboards in London to claim victory.

bigger
bigger
bigger
bigger

Last night the GRU agents launched their @Pr0ud_Bear Twitter account and their webpage proudbear.ru to proudly confess their deed and to celebrate success.

Putin riding Brexit bulldog Arron Banks - video

The GRU officers ask for donations. They want to rent the animated billboard at Waterloo Station to show the real man behind Brexit. A bare breasted Putin "taking back control" while riding Big Ben with the Russian flag flying on top of it.

(photoshopped) bigger

The billboard rent for two weeks is £55,000 of which, as of now, £1,206 have been raised.

In a press notice the 'GRU Informatsiya Directorate' notes:

"The group hopes to counter recent unwarranted negative publicity about the GRU by putting up advertisements highlighting their part in Britain’s imminent liberation from the EU.”

The British disinformation agency Reuters calls the GRU billboards "spoof" and the GRU campaign a "stunt". That is disingenuous. Proud Bear is certainly more real then the Novichok poisoning of the now vanished Skripals and more real than the 'hacking' of the DNC servers blamed on Fancy and Cozy Bear.

Hidden in the source code of the Proud Bear website (in Firefox: "view-source:https://proudbear.ru/") is a meta text written in Russian. It begins (machine translated):

Financing Proud Bear is fully secured by the proceeds from the sale of giant eggplants grown on offshore land in Panama and watered solely with tears of Georges Soros.

But seriously, all of us are volunteers and are engaged in this project only because we are really concerned about the state of health of our democracy and the fact that not one of our leaders and a very small number of active politicians show any readiness to move their goals and protect her.We know about the existence of Putin’s political machine aimed at destabilizing our society. We see its methods aimed at provoking discord and inciting nationalist enmity. And yet, those in power are in no hurry to respond. The 2016 referendum on UK membership in the European Union is an excellent example of such sabotage. The sea of ​​evidence that Russia had a hand in one of the most significant political decisions of our generation is simply ignored by our government. Theresa May prefers to promote Brexit’s ridiculous plan instead of stopping for a moment and truly investigating the question of whether Russia's influence was really decisive in the vote. The UK immediately needs a Muller-style investigation into Russian intervention in the Brexit campaign.

The British government denies that Russia had any influence in the Brexit campaign. That is not astonishing. Real GRU operations are executed flawlessly and stay secret until they are intentionally revealed. It did simply did not see the Russian hands behind it.

The hidden message goes on to lament about Russian and western campaigns to "destabilize democratic regimes" and lauds Russian journalists for revealing "the corrupt and antidemocratic nature of power in Russia."

That sounds like a typical GRU faint. Mirrors behind mirrors. In their hidden statement the Proud Bear agents play British victims while being the Russian source of the influence campaign that led to Brexit.

The Daily Beast is more inclined then Reuters to believe in the truth of the Russian menace.

bigger

It claims that the Russian Internet Research Agency in St.Petersburg is celebrating its great success of manipulating the U.S. midterm elections:

The Mueller-indicted Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency is apparently declaring victory in the U.S. election and warning the “citizens of the United States of America” that “your intelligence agencies are powerless.”“Despite all their efforts, we have thousands of accounts registered on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit spreading political propaganda,” read a statement attributed to the St. Petersburg-based organization. “These accounts work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to discredit anti-Russian candidates and support politicians more useful for us than for you.”
The statement appeared on a website titled the “Internet Research Agency American Division” that popped up over the weekend. Featuring a clip art logo of a green goblin typing on a laptop, and packed with absurd boasts about the IRA’s prowess, the site at first appeared to be a lampoon. But on Tuesday night it posted a previously unseen list of 100 IRA Instagram accounts that Facebook confirmed as authentic.

The unnamed website found 100 Instagram accounts that were "authentic"? Who knew that any such exist?

The website, which the Daily Beast does not dare to name, is usaira.ru. BBC Russia took a look at it and also seems to believe (machine translation) that the IRA is behind it.

The Instagram accounts listed on the site, for example instagram.com/immi.great, are - as of now - all dead. Facebook claims that it already deleted many of the named accounts before the usaira.ru website went up. (Immi.great though is also a Youtube account of Dmajan Denoble, a legitimate lawyer who gives immigration advice.)

But how can Dana Rohrabacher, the most pro-Russian representative, lose in the midterm election if the Russians influenced it?

To me the usaira.ru site seems fake. A spoof or stunt created to further defame the Russian web company which the Muller investigation accused of selling advertisement space on the inspiring web- and Facebook pages it built for that purpose.

It is possible that the Atlantic Council's DFRLab created the usaira.ru site to promote its censorship campaign? Quite so.

Proud Bear though is real. Russia is always proud to parade its troops (vid) when it celebrates victory. Britain is in political chaos over Brexit. The GRU won. It comes out into the open, offers vodka and celebrates it.

That's how its done. Nastrovje!

---
^*Note: The above may contain traces of snark.

Posted by b on November 8, 2018 at 05:17 PM | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/two-russian-influence-campaigns-claim-victory-one-is-real-the-other-one-fake.html