Catalan Independence : Russian Bullseye

This is the latest that is emerging; as expected the Russians had meddled in the Catalan crisis (cessation of the region of Catalan from Spain). There is confirmed intelligence inputs that at least some of the hackers behind the online campaigns that were taking place during the Catalan Independence crisis were in Russia. These charges are also supported by many members of the European Parliament, such as Victor Bostinaru, who is a member of the European Parliament and Vice Chair of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. As a result of this the signatories of the Prague Declaration are pressurizing the European Union (EU) to effectively enhance its efforts in countering Russian propaganda.

In an effort to split the EU, Russia’s Information Warfare (IW) machinery had worked overtime to equate the Catalan crisis to the Crimean or Kurdish conflicts in the eyes of the public, and thus, influence public opinion. The entire effort of the Russian IW machinery was to portray the legally elected Spanish government and its justice system as guilty of unlawfully suppressing a mass movement in the north eastern region. The news organizations which are part of the Russian IW machinery have pumped in fake news along with real news, for example they claimed at one stage that Madrid had sent in paramilitary troops to Barcelona and that a civil war is imminent in Spain, while the EU remained a passive spectator.

As a result of the intense online activity carried out by pro-Russian profiles particularly on Twitter, this crisis has become the most relevant issue in international politics, particularly on internet forums. A very surprising flavour that was being portrayed by these disturbances was the fact that “Western Democracy and the European Union”, was largely a failed model / institution.

The image below portrays a group of Civil Guard officers pushing voters, which was actively shared on twitter; however malicious elements have edited the image to add a Catalan flag in the center of the scuffle.

It does not require any grey matter to comprehend the impact of this editing of the image. Additionally, several anonymous accounts shared a video on twitter of police officers beating up a young man, referring to it as “Spanish police attack Catalan voter”. There were thousands of retweets within hours. On scrutiny it turned out to be a video of a November 2012 incident.

Since the incident of the Russian meddling into the 2016 US Presidential election, quite a few social conversation monitoring tools have been active on the internet to keep track of the activities of pro-Russian profiles / websites. These tools report that pro-Kremlin twitter accounts increased their mention of the Catalan crisis by 2,000% during the period approaching the referendum date. There appeared to be a mutual appreciation framework in play, wherein not only were TV channels funded by the Russian government giving priority attention to the independence referendum, but big time attention was also being given by websites specializing in conspiracy theories. The 2,000% increase in Catalonia-related online activity in Russia was detected by the tool “Hamilton 68”. This not only involved anonymous accounts, but also a sudden interest in this crisis by famous social media users from the US.

The main account being operated by the hackers was, Anonymous (@YourAnonNews, 1.7 million followers). The purpose of the inputs generated by this account was to create an image that democracy was dead in Europe. To justify the thought process, images of people trying to vote being stopped and beaten by the police, were being published. The posts received thousands of retweets. The dominant hashtag throughout 01 Oct 2017 (day of the referendum) was #CatalanReferendum, with a 7500% increase in use. Another unique feature of the pro-Russian profiles was the fact that they shared content from RT (the media outlet financed by the Russian government. RT was at the forefront of the influence operations carried out during the US Presidential elections of 2016). RT in particular covered the events of 01 Oct 2017 with great zeal and intensity. The portrayal was so real that many were made to feel that the vote was a legitimate action with democratic guarantees. The Spanish edition of RT had the headline “Catalonia chooses its destiny,” making it appear to the world as if it were a consensual and binding referendum. Another popular twitter account Voice of Europe (@V_of_Europe), a pro-Russian pseudo-media source, was shut down by twitter in the middle of the night before the voting began.

The basic thought behind the online campaign was to project an image of the breakup of the EU, since the EU has been in the forefront of implementation of sanctions against the Russian federation. Julian Assange was also in the fray, he directly addressed the President of the European Commission, wherein he asked for Spain to be suspended from the EU for its violation of human rights.Two days before the vote he accused Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy of being responsible for starting a world war through internet censorship. This particular message was retweeted 14,000 times on twitter. Assange went one step further, wherein, to facilitate electronic vote tallying, he recommended sending the ballots through Telegram, an application developed by a Russian company.

It was Assange again, who had previously used the famous image of the Chinese Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, of a lone figure facing a line of tanks in Beijing, and made the comment, “Spain, this won’t work in Catalonia”. Assange tweeted and retweeted an article written by Raimondo (Justin Raimondo, director of the website AntiWar, and an anti-globalization activist who is also a strong Trump supporter) on the same topic four times, and achieved 4078 retweets almost immediately.

Other twitter profiles of interest, reinforcing the same linkage between Tiananmen and Barcelona were, @Ian56789 with 30,300 followers, and @UncleRuthless with 5,179 followers, generally they retweet stories or contain links to articles published by Russian government funded media outlets such as RT or Sputnik.

Now why does all this online activity on the internet appear to be with vested interests, because messages being sent on social media generally go viral over a period of several days, it takes time for the message to spread, people to read it, comprehend it, and then as per their likings, act on it. However, in the case of the tweets from Assange, it received 2000 retweets in an hour and reached 12000 retweets in less than a day. The fact that the tweets went viral so quickly, point to the fact that online popularity is being generated through technical means. Most probably by the use of bots / fake social media profiles which are used primarily for the purpose of automatically repeating certain messages. An analysis by Twitter Audit of 5000 of Assange’s followers prove that 59% of them are fake.

The famous CIA whistle blower Edward Snowden, who currently stays in Russia also joined Assange in his efforts. On September 21, Snowden tweeted “The Spanish crackdown on inconvenient speech, politics, and assembly in #Catalonia is a violation of human rights.” This message was retweeted almost 8,000 times in less than 24 hours and received 8,000 likes.

Around this time Pravda also jumped into the fray by running a story which equated the situation in Barcelona with what happened in Crimea, during its annexation. This was a totally new trend, giving a whole new level of exaggeration to the Catalonian crisis. This story was shared on Twitter by two Pravda accounts (@pravda.ru and @pravdaonline) both with a following of 230,000 users.

Now comes another very interesting strategy in the Russian Information Warfare Rule Book- use of like-minded western academia to make their cause more broad based and get western society acceptability. The comparison between Barcelona and Tiananmen was also made by European academic Richard Wellings (@Richard Wellings has 16100 followers). He works at the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank at London. He has traditionally been very critical of the sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its intervention in Ukraine. He is a regular commentator on RT and Sputnik.

The framework of Russian influence has not only provided support for independence in the form of propaganda; once Spanish judicial authorities declared the referendum illegal and blocked logistical preparations for the same, pro-independence Catalonian forces were only left with the support of hackers to maintain websites containing the electoral roll and information on where to vote. As per Spain’s Civil Guard, a group of hackers based in Russia and satellite countries were permanently creating new links in order to have multiple options of the census site, thereby making it impossible for the Spanish judiciary and police to shut them down. The websites opened in Russia or its ally states continued to function with impunity because Russia would not honour requests to shut down the sites.

Modus Operandi

By now i.e. end 2017, the Russian Information Warfare machinery has carried out a large number of Influence Operations, some of the salient aspects of their ways of working are as follows:-

• The Russian IW machinery requires only a seed of the original problem to be present. There after they are capable enough to nurture it into a fully grown tree, in spite of not having any locus standi in the original problem.
• The digital armies of the Russian government aim to make news stories with exaggerated or fake claims, thereafter they ensure that they go viral to exacerbate a crisis and create divisions within the target audience, something that ends up benefiting the Russian government. These online warriors (trolls / bots)make use of websites that resemble serious news outlets and then they create or use these websites to house content that they later share.
• Include academics and like-minded people who are bona fide members of the target audience. Such persons will always be there, in any democracy. When references are made by people from amongst your own group, it provides legitimacy. Also it is very difficult to shut them down since they are your own.
• They create a virtual nexus between various like-minded entities to create an image / aura that a huge part of the audience is thinking the same contrarian thought.
• In all the cases the subtle aim is to make it appear as if the crisis has not been caused by Russia, but that it has sought to exaggerate and irreparably damage it, by disseminating fake news, to muddy the public discourse, creating greater friction and divisions, as a result less clarity and certainty.
• The basic check is to ensure, never to create only false information, because then it will be detected and dumped. The aim of the Russian IW machinery is to create and launch content that is sometimes real, and sometimes fake. Leaving permanent doubt in the minds of the target audience. This happens to be a psychological weakness of the human mind also.
• Paint the current crisis in such a manner, so that one can draw parallels with other incidents, in which Russia has been the villain, such as annexation of Crimea.
• In the case of the Catalonian crisis, Russia may not have any material interest in the independence of Catalonia; the fundamental aim was to create division at any cost, so that they are able to slowly undermine Europe’s democracy and its democratic institutions. Depending on the purpose to be achieved, the motivation changes.

The Kremlin, however, has stated a number of times that the Spanish crisis is an internal affair of Spain, and it has nothing to do with it.This is the new status quo, and we should understand that the disruption that is taking place, is part of the same cyber warfare that is now being played out in front of our eyes on a day to day basis. We need to sit up and take note of this kind of warfare, because this is the new normal. Our environment is ripe for this kind of warfare, because of the unparalleled rate of digitization happening in our country. Finally, we also have a large number of enemies who are already waiting to exploit this.