1.2. Intensity of influence

About 19 000 posts were selected during one month. Due to the imperfect of the “Search” function, the posts were subsequently reviewed in “manual” mode for compliance with the research topic (for example, at the request of “Ukraine Colony” the system published all posts that contained those two words, not necessarily in one sentence).

Only 5,393 posts out of 19 000 ( ~ 28 %) were identified as relevant to the topics.

The number of the corresponding posts is significantly different for each operation which led to the difference in indicators (for example, operation 1 - 14%, operation 4 - 55%). The impartiality occurred due to the mentioned disparity in analysts’ approaches to keywords use. Distribution of posts by operations is provided in Annex 13.

34% of the established information resource were engaged in the information operation run in VKontakte network to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of the international community (one of 8 operations) involved. Those recourses have distributed 24% of the total number of posts on this topic.

This finding supports the thesis stated in the “Introduction” that one of the main directions of countering the Western aid is to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of the global community.

The purpose of this operation, and hence the importance of countering information influence, is much broader than ceasing the International assistance.

1.2. Intensity of influence

Groups and accounts

1777 groups and accounts were involved in the distribution of the mentioned posts, which shared 5393 posts on the topic.

Content analysis showed a large amount of the identical publications (reposts) on different resources.

During the compiling of the rating, the analysts outlined resources that published content on the topics of most operations (Annex 14). For mathematical definition of such posts conditionally 2 messages within each operation were identified, ie resources which had not less than 16 posts. Therefore, a total of 53 resources were selected (3% of the total).

At the same time, these 3% of the resources distributed 33% of the total number of posts.

A comparison of the most active resources identified during the Preparatory and First stages (Annexes 3, 5 and 14, respectively) shows that they coincide:

• 8 out of 9 groups from the previous stage (~ 90%) were also identified as active resources in the First stage of the study;

• 3 out of 5 personal accounts from the previous stage (60%) are defined as active resources of the first stage.

Websites

Among 5393 posts, 2358 had links to “external” resources (site, YouTube , other social media and messengers). After processing the links, 355 unique sources were identified.

The top 50 sites by the number of links to them found in the posts are listed in Annex 15. They can be reached through 1745 links in posts, which is 70% of total number number of links.

These sites are characterized by intensive content production (over 50 materials per day), the presence of branded and non-branded pages on “VKontakte”, “Facebook”, “Twitter”. Some of them have clear signs of a multi-level organizational structure.

Thus, the analysts came to the site “ARH-ANO - Army of People’s Liberation” (ik.arhano.ru), which, having an average daily activity of 50-60 messages (openly anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western), automatically distributes its publications to 36 groups and accounts with a total audience of more than 140 thousand readers. The analysis of “sponsored” groups revealed 21 groups with the same name with different locations, 15 of which are located in Ukraine, 3 - in the occupied territory of Ukraine (Annex 16). The quote on the website testifies to the “Ukrainian” direction of the structure: “We are in direct contact with the resistance forces in all cities of Ukraine.” The total potential audience of these groups in Ukraine is more than 54.7 thousand users.

Example of automatic distribution of destructive materials : 9.07.2020 in the period from 6:00 to 6:16

with an interval of 1 to 3 minutes 35 groups and 1 account in the social network VKontakte published

36 posts of almost the same content (rearranged links, added different hashtags). The text represents

most of the first paragraph of the article “Democrats against Republicans. The mess in the United States

continues… ”from the Arhano website, which was published on July 9, 2020 at 5:55. The early period

of publication can be explained by the desire of the authors to reach the largest possible an audience on

that day.

Thus, during the project implementation, analysts identified information resources of a probable anti-Ukrainian organization, which may have branches in Ukraine. These materials may be provided to the law enforcement bodies of Ukraine, SBU primarily for decision-making on the inspection of this structure and its disposal.

The method developed during the research can be used to detect the activity of such structures in time close to real time of their appearance in the infosphere.