It has been less than a week since the Ukrainian port city of Berdyansk fell into the hands of the Russian army. But a new digital media platform supporting the Russian government has already settled here.
This company, called “Southern Front”, prepares content supporting Russian leader Vladimir Putin and shares it on platforms such as YouTube and social media application Telegram.
The company also carries out propaganda activities with these contents in the regions seized by Russia through a website.
The Southern Front made its first post on the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now they have a large number of reporters and they produce new news every day.
The BBC’s research, on the other hand, indicates that some of the findings in these news may not be correct.
In early March, a reporter broadcasting from Berdyansk for the platform claimed that Russian soldiers had prevented a planned attack and killed two Moroccan men, who were working for Ukrainian mercenaries.
However, it turns out that some elements in the video they released are actually fake.
The report also claimed that these two Moroccan men, who were associated with the attack attempt, had a Ukrainian residence permit on them.
The BBC contacted one of these two men, whom the Southern Front claims killed, via its social media account.
This person, who did not want to share his identity, stated that he did not know about the news and that he had left Ukraine and returned to Morocco before the Russian invasion began.
The Southern Front regularly publishes videos based on such baseless claims.
In these videos, there are allegations that people lead a “peaceful” life in the regions occupied by Russia and that aim to legitimize Russia’s occupation.
For example, in one special report, the reporter broadcasts from a library where he claims to have found many books bearing the “Nazi symbol”.
However, there is no evidence of this in the video, and the footage shows contemporary books by Ukrainian writers describing real historical events.
Russian forces ‘protector’, Russian occupation ‘liberation’
Julia Smirnova of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue says the platform could be “part of Russia’s strategy to maintain control over the territories it occupies in Ukraine.”
Smirnova draws attention to her publications describing the Russian occupation as “liberation” and the Russian forces as “protectors” in the regions under the control of Russia in the south of Ukraine.
Who is behind the ‘Southern Front’?
The media platform shared its first message on its Telegram channel, hours after Russian forces launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
“Vladimir Putin announced that he has launched a special operation to disarm and de-Nazis Ukraine,” the statement of the channel, which had only 25 members at the time (today the number has exceeded 23 thousand), was used. A few days later, a new website was launched.
Originally St. The site, which used a server from St. Petersburg, later switched to the server of US Cloudfare, which aimed to hide the original owner of the website.
For the platform, mostly amateur youths living in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, or in the “people’s republics” proclaimed by pro-Russian separatists, provide news. says.
The BBC also asked the Southern Front who the owner of the platform was, but received no response.
On the other hand, there are some indications that an institution with strong links to the Russian government played a role in producing this content.
After examining dozens of videos, we realized that the broadcasts were recorded in conference halls displaying the logo of the Russia-Donbas Integration Committee.
According to the website of this Crimea-based committee, the organization’s mission is to build economic and humanitarian relations between Russia’s annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists in Donbas.
The leaders of the people’s republics in eastern Ukraine occupy high-level roles in this institution. As a matter of fact, one of the coordinators is Andrey Kozenko, a former Russian lawmaker who has been sanctioned by the USA and the European Union.
The number of subscribers increased by 10 thousand in 1 hour
The contents of the Southern Front are also shared on Telegram through some networks managed by users living in the occupied countries.
Although the total number of subscribers of these channels seems to be over 80 thousand, it is understood that the platform pays one out of every 3 subscribers in order to inflate the number of viewers.
According to the analysis of TG Stat, which analyzed Telegram data, on March 29, the subscriber count of three of these channels increased by more than 10 thousand in just one hour.
Social media accounts have few followers.
However, some media outlets, including the pro-Kremlin newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets, which is also read in the former Soviet countries, as well as accounts with lots of followers on social media, known as ‘influencers’, support the shares of the platform.
Ukrainian hackers: ‘Welcome to hell’
Ukrainian supporters were quick to counterattack.
A group of activists hacked the Southern Front’s website and shared a message targeting those who supported Russia’s annexation of Kherson.
In a post they wrote “Welcome to hell”, hackers warned that those who support a so-called referendum in Kherson will be punished by Ukraine.
The site returned to normal shortly after this cyber attack.
‘A threat to independent media’
Some experts point out that the institutionalization of this propaganda project poses a threat to Ukrainians.
Reminding that independent media outlets were disbanded after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Smirnova says, “It is highly likely that the Russian authorities will follow a similar path by arresting independent journalists in the south of Ukraine and replacing independent media outlets with propaganda channels.”
This news With contributions from Samia Hosny and Olga Robinson of the BBC Monitoring Service prepared