Pro-Russian influencers in battle order

Misinformation can pay off on social networks, as a study by the independent organization Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), specializing in social network analysis, reminds us. The organization has identified twelve influencers in eight Western countries who “spread pro-Russian disinformation discourse”. These influencers have accumulated more than two million followers on the Internet, the majority acquired since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, on February 24.

Among them are two French women. The most popular of them is Anne-Laure Bonnel, who presents herself as an investigator. “Military support and US presence in Ukraine since 2014??? The proof in pictures! The US has been arming Ukraine for years. The dark side of a war…”, she tweets, for example, on May 30, on his account, followed by more than 72,000 people – he had only 26,000 at the beginning of the war. In 2015, she produced a documentary on the Donbass region, exclusively shot on the Russian side of the border and, in fact, criticized by several journalists present on the spot, whose correspondent World in Moscow, Benoît Vitkine. “She was carried around in the separatist territories by… officials from these same territories. It is them that we heard, in the film, asking questions to the witnesses, not the journalist. (…) False things, which have been repeatedly dismantled, fables concocted by Russian television and which Anne-Laure Bonnel’s guides magically put under her nose, “ he explained in March 2022. Criticisms to which the investigator responded to our colleagues from Release.

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Christelle Néant, for her part, is the founder of the pro-Russian news site Donbass Insider and has lived in this region of Ukraine for six years. Regularly present on the RT channel (ex-Russia Today, financed by the Kremlin and now banned in Europe), she “continues to defend Moscow’s point of view and exposes the ‘lies’ of the West” as the media review site wrote in March Freeze frames. The one who says that “neo-Nazi battalions work for kyiv” is followed by more than 40,000 people on its YouTube channel and 26,000 on its Telegram group.

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Donations and advertising revenue

The phenomenon affects the whole world: the United States, Canada, Italy and Spain are concerned. The popularity gain for these influencers is sometimes dizzying. One of the most prominent examples is that of Alina Lipp, a 29-year-old German, former member of the German Green Party, who until recently was almost unknown on the Internet. His Telegram channel had just 2,000 followers in beginning of February. She is now at the head of a community of more than 141,000 members, for which she publishes in German and Russian. It displays, for example, various shots where we see a man, a swastika tattooed on his chest. “ Photos on the phone of a killed Ukrainian soldier. But there are no Nazis in Ukraine “, ironically the legend.

On platforms like YouTube, at least three influencers manage to generate income from this activity. According to the ISD, the Spaniard Liu Sivaya earns, for example, up to 2,000 dollars a month thanks to the advertisements placed in front of her videos. These influencers also benefit from the donations of their audience during live broadcasts, which “can bring in between 20 to 700 euros per stream”, again according to the ISD. They too often made themselves known after the start of the conflict: thus “70% of subscribers to [l’influenceur américain] Patrick Lancaster started following him after the war broke out and 47% of his views were realized after the invasion”write the authors of the study.

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The contents of these influencers have not only been shared by popular pro-Russian and pro-China Facebook groups, but also by accounts close to the Russian or Chinese government, such as the Russian Embassy in Paris. These relays enabled them to reach a new audience, estimated at more than 18 million users. The link between these States and the influencers is not, however, proven. The sharing, fairly spaced out in time, rather suggests uncoordinated actions, carried out by support groups who see in these accounts an additional means of influencing public opinion.

Maxime Pernet