Heres what we know about alleged Russian

involvement in Brexit

By Georgina Lee-16 NOV 2017

Weve heard a lot in recent weeks about Russias alleged involvement in the EU
referendum.

On Monday, Theresa May said Vladimir Putins government was trying to

undermine free societies and was planting fake stories to sow discord in the
West.

Although on Wednesday, the Prime Minister appeared to soften her language.

She told parliament: if [Labour MPs] cared to look at the speech I gave on
Monday they will see that the examples I gave of Russian interference were not in
the United Kingdom.
Russia has been accused of meddling in recent elections in America, France and
elsewhere. What about Britain?

FactCheck takes a look at what we know.

Alleged Russian influence on US politics through social media

To understand the allegations of Russian involvement in the EU referendum, we
should first look at its reported links to the US presidential election.

Many of the allegations centre on the Russian Internet Research Agency. The
company, based in Saint Petersburg, creates online media posts that are
favourable to Russian government interests.

The Agency was making the news as far back as April 2015, when Donald Trump
was still the guy off the Apprentice and Brexit was a word muttered only in
the back rooms of the Conservative Party headquarters.

At the time, the Guardian published an investigation Inside a Russian troll

house. They found hundreds of bloggers [who] are paid to flood forums and
social networks at home and abroad with anti-western and pro-Kremlin
comments.

It is believed that this is the home of the Agency and the nexus of Russias
attempts to use social media to influence overseas politics.
Jump forward to January 2017 six months post-referendum and six weeks after
Mr Trumps election. The Office of the US Director of National
Intelligence publishes a report that concludes Russian President Vladimir Putin
ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.

In October this year, we found out more about how the Agency works, after a
former employee told an independent TV channel that the companys goal
wasnt to turn Americans toward Russia. Our goal was to set Americans against
their own government to provoke unrest, provoke dissatisfaction, lower
[Barack] Obamas rating.

And that month, we got an insight into the scale of Russias alleged social media
influence.
The New York Times reported that Russian agents disseminated inflammatory
posts that reached 126 million users on Facebook, published more than 131,000
messages on Twitter and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Googles YouTube
service ahead of the US presidential election.

The reports were drawn from detailed disclosures sent to Congress by

companies whose products are among the most widely used on the internet.

Earlier this month, a BuzzFeed investigation found that the Russian government
made wire transfers to more than 60 Russian embassies between August and
September 2016. BuzzFeed reported that the transfers were sent with the
message to finance election campaign of 2016.

A spokesperson for the Russian government said the money was designed to help
embassies cover the cost of helping Russian citizens living abroad to vote in the
countrys own parliamentary election, which took place in September 2016.

What is not clear is whether any of this activity was linked to Donald Trumps
presidential campaign that question will be answered in the course of the five
federal investigations that are underway in the US.

Its also worth pointing out that some attempts to uncover Russian-controlled
fake accounts have been inaccurate. A report by the Scotsman found that an
alleged Russian online troll named on a prominent news website is actually a
security guard from Glasgow.

Did Russian fake accounts try to influence the EU referendum?

So, according to reports, the Russian Internet Research Agency built up a
significant social media presence in the run up to the US presidential election. It
was apparently able to reach hundreds of millions of users.

But what about the UK? What evidence do we have so far of Russian influence on
the Brexit vote?
In October 2017, research from City, University of London found that a 13,500-
strong Twitter bot army was present on the social media site around the time of
the referendum.

Twitter bots are accounts that are not run by real people, but instead post
content automatically. The accounts sometimes adopt a fake persona to attract
real users to their posts. You can find out more about how to spot a bot here.

The lead researcher of the City project said of the bots: We believe these
accounts formed a network of zombie agents. He said We didnt find evidence
that bots helped spread fake news. Instead, they were invested in feeding and
echoing user-curated, hyper partisan and polarising information.

In the four weeks prior to the vote, the accounts posted a total of 65,000 tweets
about the referendum tweets that were described as showing a clear slant
towards the Leave campaign.

However, its worth saying that the researchers didnt mention any Russian
involvement.
This week, further research into Twitter bots and the Brexit vote was published by
the Oxford Internet Institute. It looked at 22.6 million tweets and cross-referred
them with 2,752 accounts that the US Senate has identified as creations of the
Russian Internet Research Agency.

Researcher Yin Yin Lu told Sky News that she had found 416 tweets from the
Russian accounts from March to July 2016 (i.e. the months preceding the EU
referendum).

She was careful to point out that the number of these tweets is important to
highlight. So theres about 400 tweets here out of 22.6 million. That is a very
infinitesimal fraction. So the word interference is perhaps a bit exaggerated.

Although she did say that the tweets did appear to be coordinated with
accounts apparently retweeting and sharing each others content. She said
theres some kind of network happening here

A second report this time from the University of Edinburgh found a higher
number of tweets about Brexit from the Russian Internet Research Agency.
The Guardian reports that researchers identified 419 accounts operating from the
Agency that were attempting to influence UK politics. The accounts were on the
list of 2,752 accounts suspended by Twitter in the US.

Professor Laura Cram, who led the research, told the Guardian that those 419
accounts tweeted about Brexit at total of 3,468 times mostly after the
referendum had taken place.

Separately, an upcoming paper from researchers at the University of California,

Berkeley, and Swansea University is set to reveal an even wider network of pro-
Brexit Russian bots.

The research which has been seen by the Times newspaper tracked over
150,000 Russian accounts that used the hashtag Brexit, most of which were
advocating Britains departure from the EU.

One account, Svetal1972, posted 92 tweets between 20 and 24 June, including

one that called for Britain to make June the 23rd our Independence Day.

But why would Russia want Brexit to happen anyway?

So theres some evidence of Russian involvement in spreading pro-Leave
sentiment online although nothing as yet that suggests interference on the
same scale as is alleged in the US. But if those reports are true, whats in it for the
Kremlin?

Some analysts have suggested that Russia favours Brexit because it thinks it will
weaken the EUs negotiating position when it fronts up to Moscow on issues like
the Ukraine.

This theory seems plausible when we look at the tweet from the mayor of
Moscow, Sergei Sobyahin, who wrote that Without Britain, there wont be
anybody in the EU to defend sanctions against us so zealously.

Michael McFaul a former US ambassador to Russia put the case in similar

terms, tweeting Putin benefits from a weaker Europe. UK vote [to leave the EU]
makes EU weaker. Its just that simple.

What about Arron Banks?

Separate to the question of social media influence, Arron Banks the co-founder
of the Leave.EU campaign is currently under investigation by the Electoral
Commission.

They are looking into whether Banks broke campaign finance rules in relation to
donations and loans at the EU referendum.

The company Better for the Country Limited of which Banks is a director is
also part of the probe.
The investigation is looking at whether Banks was the true source of loans
reported by a referendum campaigner in his name and whether Better for the
Country Limited was the true source of donations made to referendum
campaigners in its name, or if it was acting as an agent.

The announcement by the Electoral Commission from November this year makes
no mention of Russia or any Russian actors. Indeed, it doesnt say whether there
are any specific third parties being examined as part of the investigation.

In a statement, Mr Banks said: The Leave. EU campaign was funded by myself,

Peter Hargreaves and the general public...My sole involvement with the
Russians was a boozy 6 hour lunch with the Ambassador where we drank the
place dry.

In an interview with Banks earlier this year, the Guardian quoted him as saying
that we had no Russian money into Brexit.

The journalist conducting the interview, Carole Cadwalladr, wrote that the
comment would be a perfectly reasonable answer, if he had been asked if Russia
had put money into Brexit. But he hadnt. He asked and answered his own
question.
Posted by Thavam