The interconnection between Russian propaganda Telegram groups
April 5, 2022 — PIERRE VOUÉ
After tracking a number of Russian propaganda narratives within the first five days of the war on Ukraine, we continued our analysis on Telegram. Using our cutting edge AI monitoring tool, we collected data from 52 Telegram groups associated with Russian war propaganda. Our aim was to identify the peak of the posts, and establish how interconnected the Telegram groups were.
The criteria upon which the groups were selected are as follows:
Mirrors of Russia Today
Official recommendations from our expert
Manual search on social media (mainstream (Twitter) and alternative (4chan)) for the promotion of Telegram groups.
Looking at the most quoted other groups from a given Telegram group, with a maximum of 2 degrees of separation from the original one.
For each group the messages collected span from December 1st 2021 until the beginning of March 2022. Within that time frame, a total of 318.618 messages were found.
Figure 1 - Number of posts between Dec 1st 2021 and March 10th 2022
Dec. 07: Joe Biden warns that Russia may invade Ukraine,
Dec. 17: Vladimir Putin proposes limits on NATO's activities in eastern Europe,
Jan. 17: Russian troops began arriving in Russia's ally Belarus for military exercises,
Jan. 24: NATO puts troops on standby,
Feb. 10: Russia and Belarus begin 10 days of military manoeuvres,
Feb. 17: Combats escalate in separatist regions of eastern Ukraine,
Feb. 21: Putin recognizes 2 separatist regions,
Feb. 24: Russia invades Ukraine
The figure above shows the number of posts over time between December 1st 2021 and March 10th 2022. Each vertical line corresponds to a development in the conflict (see above). Despite the diplomatic and political escalation that took place until Ukraine’s invasion, the activity on Telegram remained rather constant until February 10th, where the graph shows a gradual increase in daily messages, a sad echo of the escalation of combat in separatist regions Donbass and Luhansk. A notable peak is reached on the day of the Russian invasion, before gradually decreasing while remaining above the pre-invasion average.
Figure 2 - Network of related Telegram groups
The network analysis shows how often the 25 most connected groups quote each other. The size of each dot (or ‘node’) in the network is a reflection of how often the associated group is being referenced by others. In this context, ‘referenced’ means either sharing a link to that group or forwarding a message from it.
While most of the network looks fairly decentralised, the main group standing out is KOTSNEWS. This group is that of Alexander Kots (Александр Коц), a field journalist from the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda (Комсомольская правда), currently covering the war on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Apart from Telegram, Alexander Kots’ group mainly references articles from its affiliated journal, Komsomolskaya Pravda (160), as well as YouTube videos (40). Around a third of all YouTube links point to videos that have now been removed by the platform. Given the nature of his group and other videos it links to, it is safe to assume that the removed videos were propaganda ones.
Another notable point from the network is the presence of news outlets that have no direct ties to Russian news and developments, such as Gallia Daily or Bellum Acta. Gallia Daily describes itself as “100% Non-partisan, independent & free” while Bellum Acta sports the description “Bellum Acta defines itself as a "Ultra-Rightist" & "not-so-Impartial" Crisis-focused NEWS aggregator which usually posts on Current News & Geopolitics”. Upon closer inspection, however, Gallia Daily also exhibits far-right traits by sharing French white supremacist black metal songs and sharing racist posts from 4chan, among other things.
The link with both those groups suggest a potential connection between Russian propaganda news outlets and European far-right groups, with the latter sharing and promoting content of the former. Furthermore, it is to be noted that Bellum Acta News is an extremely active group, with a total of 71.267 messages over the observed timespan, which is an average of approximately 700 messages per day, 2.5x as much as the second most prolific group in the data set.
Finally, unsurprisingly, many group names sport the infamous ‘Z’, synonymous with support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bellum Acta is also one of the most prolific groups when it comes to sharing links pointing outside of Telegram. Interestingly, Twitter is referenced even more frequently than Telegram in this group. Upon closer examination, Bellum Acta links to many different Twitter profiles, even though one stands out. Indeed, Brendan Gutenschwager is linked to 653 times, while the second most referenced profile only gathers 187 hits. Brendan Gutenschwager describes himself as an “independent reporter, documenting history as it unfolds”. According to an article by the Intercept, he earned some visibility by video documenting antifa and BLM protests in the USA. The newspaper points out that “Gutenschwager’s video of mayhem at left-wing protests is frequently used by right-wing outlets and meme creators to smear demonstrators.” As of writing, the precise link between the journalist and Bellum Acta, remains unclear.
More generally, Telegram groups tied to an established news outlet tend to promote links to their own website.
As a matter of conclusion, it seems that Telegram groups are usually rather self-contained and serve as mirrors for other platforms or websites. However, in specific instances, there seems to be an asymmetric relationship between Russian propaganda outlets and far-right European groups which may act as an information bridge by pointing both to those Russian outlets and to mainstream platforms such as Twitter or Youtube. It should be noted, however, that this conclusion is based on a small subset of all existing relevant Telegram groups, and should accordingly be interpreted with caution.