The Russian government is increasingly using social media and other methods of electronic communications interference to target foreigners who it perceives as actively assisting the Ukrainian Armed Forces. These things do not trouble me as I have been a victim of them in the past but it is good to be armed with foresight and knowledge about the scope of the Russian government’s capacities in this regard so you can establish, if you come to Ukraine, whether you might be a target and what the Russian government might do to you.
The Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, as it was once called (its current name is unclear - that was the name when it was associated with now deceased Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin) was known about in the West at least since 2016 and consists of a disused factory on the outskirts of St Petersburg transformed into a suite offices for the brightest IT graduates from Russian universities to undertake internet activities targeting foreigners and foreign institutions, including try to manipulate the US elections through targeted advertising. Its precise capacities are unknown but it is very sophisticated and I want to give you an impression of the sorts of things it is up to in Ukraine. By the way its address is 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg, so I just want the Russians to know that there are some people in the West who are watching what they are doing.
Firstly it is known to scour social media accounts for photographs of people in photographs with Ukrainian soldiers and then, using forensic imaging techniques available to the general public (including “Google Lens”), matching those photographs with images of people on other social media websites or on the internet in general. In this way, they acquire a list of names and other material data on the identities of people who are providing acting support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is unlikely to happen to you if you work at a volunteer kitchen in Lviv but it is understood that they are specifically looking for images of people with members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. So, if you are part of an NGO that operates on the front line (and there are few that do because it is very dangerous), the first thing to say is that you should never take photographs. Now I know that you want to take photographs because that’s part of your fundraising efforts and the like and you want to show photos of yourself with happy smiling soldiers. But you have to understand that this is a war and in doing this you are making yourself a target.
It is well known that there is a Telegram channel in which all the members of the International Legion for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (foreign soldiers fighting for Ukraine) who have been identified using for the most part facial recognition techniques on social media which has then been cross-referenced with personal identification information available on the internet. For the individual this is a laborious process but for the Internet Research Agency it is trivially easy and no doubt automated just as it is when western law enforcement agencies are searching for a perpetrator of a crime using CCTV. The distinguishing feature for facial recognition, incidentally, is not just shape of the face but the retina. Therefore if you are going to appear in photographs on the front line, whether as a member of the International Legion or as a volunteer assisting the Ukrainian Armed Forces, then be sure not just to cover your face but to wear sunglasses as well.
For the most part regular Ukrainians are not captured using these identification procedures but foreigners are of particular interest because fake information can then be disseminated about them in a way that damages their reputation whereas such things are so common in Ukraine that reputational considerations are far less of an issue when there is a war on. Also the reputation of a person’s family can be damaged. Therefore Russian proxies may start posting defamatory or personal information of a harmful kind across social media and the best way of dealing with this, if it happens to you, is not to use social media (or to restrict it severely - Facebook and Instagram are the worst, as they are photograph-based which releases information about your location and interests, and enables for further deepfake alterations of images of a person) and to ignore social media posts about you that appear to be abusive. I realise that this is very hard to do in a society in which the vast majority of news and information is conveyed by social media but I have neither Facebook nor Instagram accounts for the reasons cited and neither should you if you are working in Ukraine in any capacity.
Once the Russians capture personal information about you they start twisting it and spreading it on social media and then people you know read that sort of material and start asking you why you are such a bad person. That is why it is so important not to blindly repeat the sort of defamation you routinely find on social media and that social media finds it so difficult to self-police. Thankfully western law enforcement authorities are used to this kind of thing and generally ignore social media; its evidentiary value is worthless. But amongst military and NGO communities in particular, use of social media is rife (you would not imagine how many photos are posted on Telegram of military operations in Ukraine - and we will come to that.)
Then there are a number of other more unpleasant things the Russians can do to target you if they single you out as a particularly enthusiastic supporter of Ukraine. For governments that are whole security and intelligence agencies to combat this sort of thing but for NGO workers you have virtually no resources available to protect you so that you have to live by your wits. One of the things they can do is to interfere with your email. A lot of well-known email platforms are not as strong as they should be on security; Google is probably the best but there have been instances where Google accounts have been hacked. Yahoo has or had a notorious backdoor and there was a Russian troll product that changed the password of your Yahoo account so you were locked out of it. This could ruin your life including limiting access to banking for example. It happened to me when visiting Russia but you do not have to be in Russia for this to happen to you. Thankfully my Yahoo account was of no consequence; I never used it for anything other than trivia. But if your Yahoo account is associated with important bank account or other information then you may have lost it or you may become engaged in a mind-flowingly difficult attempt to persuade an institution like a bank that you are not behind an email address that they have on their records.
I have known of cases where people have been locked out of their own bank accounts for several months as a result of Russian interference with online banking and tens of thousands of dollars or more have been transferred out of their accounts that they have struggled to get back, ruining their lives. This has happened to people volunteering in Ukraine. If you are a long-term volunteer or you are working in the East, you should take note of these risks. They are real. Use there highest levels of encryption, do not use Yahoo email, and try to access internet banking as rarely as possible.
Do not believe scandalous content about people on social media. In fact try to avoid social media altogether as it is a tool for the Russians to cause anxiety and undermine morale. Just don’t look at it. If someone sends me a link to a social media entry that is scandalous about me, I just ignore it. Who knows where it might have come from - the material might be a mix of Russian propaganda and other malicious people adding details on in an enormous game of Chinese whispers which is what social media ultimately is. Social media is the Plague of our time and I hope our young people get over it at some point soon and see it for what it is. Static websites that are reliable and hosted on secure platforms may be more reliable although of course you still need confidence in your source as there are lot of people writing rubbish out there and there are some Russian propaganda websites too in which western “bloggers” write article with pro-Russian leanings for a variety of reasons connected to the Russian government.
Now I want to say a few words about Telegram. Telegram’s headquarters are in Moscow. FSB officials work in that business’s headquarters, as they do in all important businesses in Moscow. Telegram has a back door that allows the staff to read the messages sent by Telegram and the staff of Telegram will reveal this information to the FSB if they are asked to do so. All this is documented and reported upon; none of it is secret information. Notwithstanding this, huge numbers of people in Ukraine continue to use Telegram for routine communications and they should stop doing so. Of course the vast majority of Telegram communications are not monitored by the FSB or the Internet Research Agency (Telegram is a worldwide massive communications product) but the capacity to do so exists and if you are targeted then it is possible that your communications using Telegram are easily monitored. Every form of instant messaging can be intercepted if a government is sufficiently determined to do so; there is no entirely secure messaging system if you have been targeted. If you are living and working in Ukraine then you probably have not been targeted unless you are a foreigner who is a diplomat or someone working frequently with the Ukrainian Armed Forces and they have their eye on you. They create lists of such people and those people may be targeted. So stay away from Telegram, just as the Ukrainian government has ordered its staff to do so (although the Ukrainian President nevertheless maintains a Telegram channel). The problem is that Telegram is convenient for things like channels; but those channels themselves present a security risk.
At higher levels of personal targeting, mobile telephones themselves can be intercepted and interfered with although this is exceptionally rare because it requires significant manpower to do so: perhaps four or five people working 24 hours a day adequately to intercept all the data transmitted over a busy mobile ‘phone. Very few people are sufficiently interesting to warrant such intrusion but it is possible in principle so be aware of the potential.
Are you at some sort of digital risk if you enter Ukraine during wartime? The short answer is yes, particularly if you go round posting on social media images of you with soldiers or that are obviously on the front line. The temptation to post such photographs is overwhelming, but you are opening yourself to potentially limitless attacks by a gangster state that thinks nothing of spreading lies and propaganda about people relentlessly as part of the information wars. This is another aspect of modern warfare we have to get used to, and we must be very careful.
Personally, I am rather relaxed about it all. If have been targeted by the Russians before and I am sure they know all about me in some file somewhere. This article is anonymously written. I use a primitive, old-fashioned mobile ‘phone because they are far more difficult to hack (they are very slow; modern fast mobile ‘phones have lots of spare memory and CPU capacity to run malware in the background without the user noticing) and for a long time I refused even to use internet banking. I understand the risks and I am sensible about them. With common sense, you need not become a target of the Russian internet trolls. But please, don’t take those smiling photos with soldiers out on the front line. Even soldiers themselves post these things on Telegram channels and it is an insanely dangerous thing to do.