Social media accounts using stolen photos of famous and unknown people are tweeting in favor of Russia in the global south.

Indian digital influencer ER Yamini has never posted on Twitter in his life – preferring to cultivate his large fan base on Instagram and YouTube.

But in early March, a Twitter account using her photo tweeted “#IStandWithPutin. True Friendship” accompanied by a video of two men, one representing India and the other Russia, embracing.

Yamini says she does not support any country in the war between Russia and Ukraine and is worried about what her fans will think of her.

“What will they think of me if they see this tweet?”

“I wish they wouldn’t use my picture on that profile,” he tells the BBC.

The fake account is part of a network promoting Russian President Vladimir Putin on Twitter using the hashtags #IStandWithPutin (“I’m with Putin”) and #IStandWithRussia (“I’m with Russia”) on March 2 and 3. Hashtags have become trending topics in different regions – especially in the southern hemisphere, in countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria, as if these countries were showing support for the Russians.

Some of the activities tracked were organic—in other words, produced by real people—reflecting genuine support for Putin and Russia in some countries.

But many other profiles look fake. They retweeted posts in large volumes, produced little original content, and were created very recently.

“These profiles were probably produced by bots, fake profiles or compromised accounts and artificially strengthened support for Putin in these countries,” says Carl Miller, co-founder of CASM Technology, a company specializing in online disinformation.

CASM Technology has identified 9,907 profiles that support support to Russia in several different languages ​​on March 2 and 3. And it found that over a thousand of those accounts had spam-like features.

The BBC analyzed hundreds of these seemingly untrue profiles. And our research confirms Miller’s findings – they try to pretend they’re real, but they’re actually wrong.

Through a reverse image search, we found that the photos used by these profiles were stolen from celebrities, influencers, and ordinary users who had no idea that their images were being used to support Russia in its war against Ukraine.

However, we were unable to determine who set up the accounts or if they had any ties to the Russian government.

For example, an account named Preety Sharma claims in its description that she is a “model and businesswoman” from India who currently lives in Miami. It was established on February 26, two days after the invasion of Russia. “Putin is a good person,” he says in one of his retweets.

But the woman seen in the profile picture of the account is on the other side of the world. Nicole Thorne is an Australian digital influencer with 1.5 million followers on Instagram and only occasionally uses her original Twitter profile.

Another account attempts to impersonate Indian singer Raja Gujjar. His first tweet was posted on February 24, the first day of the invasion. And all 178 posts on the account are retweets, a powerful indicator of automation.

The BBC reached out to Thorne and Gujjar, who both confirmed that these accounts are not theirs.

While very similar to a bot, not all the accounts reviewed were unfounded.

For example, let’s take a profile that was created in February 2022 and tweets started on March 2. He has no followers. By reverse searching his profile picture, the BBC found the account of a young Indian man on LinkedIn.

But it is original and made by Senthil Kumar, an aeronautical engineer. We asked him why he created an account just to retweet pro-Russian posts.

“I usually open Twitter and see what’s trending. That’s why I saw these posts and retweeted them,” he says. Kumar believes that Russia has supported India in the past and Indians should now support Russia. And she adds that her profile is new because she forgot her previous account password.

‘Western’

Accounts tweet various criticisms directed at Western countries, express solidarity among the so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and offer direct support to Putin.

“We’ve embraced the idea that information campaigns will be directed towards the West. However, there is no reference to or allegedly Western news,” Miller says.

He adds that to determine what a group of inauthentic accounts might be, the researchers looked at the accounts’ creation dates, a “non-human” tweet pattern (such as an account tweeting 24 hours a day), and variety of topics. tweeted..

“None of this can be considered evidence, but they all allow us to see if a particular collection of accounts looks suspicious,” Miller says.

Not having an original profile picture can also be a sign.

In a sample of 100 accounts monitored by CASM, the BBC found that 41 people did not have a profile picture. The other 30 had illustrations or photographs of personalities like Putin or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Only one room had paintings depicting people – and some were stolen.

Twitter prohibits “impersonation of individuals, groups or organizations to mislead, confuse or mislead others”.

The company told the BBC that since the start of the war, it has removed more than 100,000 accounts for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy, including the suspension of dozens of accounts linked to the hashtags #IStandWithRussia and #IStandWithPutin.

Twitter adds that it is investigating and suspending hundreds of accounts selected by the CASM survey and shared by the BBC.

However, the company claims it has not found any evidence of widespread coordination to artificially reinforce the feeling about the war in Ukraine.