“The journalists investigated that the Russian “Agency of Social Design”, which positions itself as an organization engaged in media support, actually uses disinformation to discredit Ukraine and promote the interests of Russia.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Source: investigation of Sueddeutsche Zeitung and TV channels NDR and WDR, project “Schemes” from “Radio Freedom”
Details: It follows from the published documents that the Russian analysts of “ASD” carefully research the information field of Ukraine, identify sensitive topics and use them to polarize society. The agency is managed by Russian political technologist Ilya Gambashidze.
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Topics include, for example, mobilization, battlefield casualties, restrictions on free speech during martial law, reductions in military aid, corruption, and the counteroffensive.
The uneasy relationship between President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, Mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko, and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhny is being used to divide society.
In particular, the media revealed the process of creating a fake with a document allegedly from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense: an order to the heads of units and departments of the Armed Forces not to confirm “information about the presence of prisoners of war for exchange on board” Il-76, which crashed in the Belgorod region of Russia in January 2024. The purpose of this fake, according to the accompanying documents, is to accuse the Ukrainian military leadership of censorship and concealment of the truth about the disaster.
Also, in the “register of fakes and pre-realities” there is a forgery of an order allegedly issued by the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi equating surrender by military personnel to treason. The purpose of this fake, as stated in the description of the task of the Russian agency, is to “discredit the military-political leadership of Ukraine and demoralize the Armed Forces.”
According to the leaked documents, Gambashydze’s political technologists are behind both the launch and promotion of pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk’s “political movement” – “Druhaya Ukraina”.
In January 2023, Viktor Medvedchuk, accused of high treason, announced the creation of this “movement” by the former head of the political trade union of the “Opposition Platform for Life” party, banned in Ukraine.
Medvedchuk is proposed to be positioned there as a “consistent fighter for the peaceful future of Ukraine”, who “talks about the advantages of starting a peaceful dialogue as an alternative to a possible nuclear war” and conveys the thesis that “Ukraine should be stopped as a testing ground for Western weapons”.
“ASD” carefully records the activity of its bots, which leave comments under the posts of Ukrainian state institutions, law enforcement agencies, politicians and Ukrainian media. According to the document “Statistics of the work of Center C” from the “ASD” source, from January to April 2024, the team published almost 34 million comments.
According to the documents from the “ASD” leak, members of the team create and reproduce on social networks fabricated video plots, stylized as materials of Western media, directed against Ukraine.
In addition, “ASD” is engaged in creating memes, one of them, with the image of Volodymyr Zelenskyi, was spread on the social network by X Elon Musk.
Also, according to documents obtained by journalists, ASD tried to influence the parliamentary elections in the EU, which were held in June 2024. They were supposed to help right-wing forces that were supposed to promote pro-Russian narratives.