Kremlin propaganda is actively spreading false and cynical videos about the criminal war against Ukraine on the social network TikTok, using thousands of fake accounts.
What is known about the mechanisms of spreading Kremlin propaganda on TikTok
Among the lies spread by Kremlin propagandists is information about allegedly luxurious cars and luxury real estate abroad owned by Ukrainian officials.
It is noted that the videos disseminated by Kremlin propaganda constantly collect millions of views and are aimed at undermining the West's support for Ukraine.
The newspaper's investigative journalists found about 800 fake TikTok accounts pretending to be real people from Germany, France, Poland, Israel and Ukraine.
In particular, stolen profile photos were used, including those of celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Colin Farrell.
Using a combination of hashtag searches and TikTok's own recommendations, BBC Verify was able to track down hundreds of similar videos targeting dozens of Ukrainian officials.
Most of the identified accounts had only one such video.
The tactic, according to TikTok representatives, is new and aims to avoid detection and manipulation of the platform's system that recommends videos to users.
These efforts were obviously coordinated: sometimes videos posted by different accounts on the same day contained the same or very similar scenarios.
What is known about the Kremlin's involvement in spreading propaganda on TikTok
In addition, during its investigation, BBC Verify found circumstantial evidence pointing to the network's possible Russian origins.
It is reported that errors typical of Russian-speaking users have been noticed, including a number of phrases used exclusively in Russian.
In addition, many of the videos contained links to a website previously identified by Meta as part of a Russian-linked network posing as official Western news sites.
Many of the videos analysed by BBC Verify targeted former Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials, portraying them as obsessed with money and indifferent to ordinary Ukrainians or military operations. They avoided direct accusations of wrongdoing, but hinted that the politicians had bought luxury real estate or goods during the war - allegations that, when checked, always turned out to be false, the journalists reported.
When the BBC reported its findings on TikTok, it said it had launched its own investigation, which uncovered fake videos in two other languages — Italian and English.
At the same time, a few weeks later, the app recommended dozens more videos to BBC journalists, apparently from the same network. Some of them were published as recently as at the end of November.
