Investigators Uncover Doctored Photos Pointing To Russian Troll Farm

(PatrioticPost.com)- Facebook has revealed how Russian trolls have been caught out making face social media accounts, posing as Russian citizens who hate Ukraine.

The social media giant revealed last week that a large number of profiles have been removed from the platform which appear to have been generated by trolls trying to make it appear as though more Russian people support the invasion of Ukraine.

Two examples were offered by Facebook. One was an entirely fake aviation engineer, and another was a guitar teacher. Both of these fake characters were posting anti-Ukraine propaganda on their social media profiles, but their profile pictures were revealed to have been generated by artificial intelligence.

The photographs looked like real people, but they were in fact people who just don’t exist. Artificial intelligence software created the characters by analyzing other photographs of humans and creating two completely new faces.

According to report, the profiles were made by two well-known disinformation groups that operate from Russia, including in the pro-Russia regions of Donbas and Crimea in Ukraine.

The content being shared on the profiles suggested that Ukraine was a “failed state” and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr was creating a “neo-Nazi dictatorship” in the country. These are two off the most common lines coming from Moscow right now, and were even used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify his invasion of the country.

The fake aviation engineer was called Vladimir Bondarenko, while the female guitar teacher was named Irina Kermova. They were said to come from Kiev and Kharkiv, respectively. Kermova was listed as a former editor-in-chief of the propaganda website “Ukraine Today.”

It shows that Russia absolutely does have a knack for pushing propaganda online through social media – but it also shows that the Russian government may not have the support it expected from the Russian people.

If hackers and trolls need to create fake accounts, then it means not enough Russian citizens are sharing Putin’s propaganda on their real accounts.

Putin must realize this is all going very, very wrong…

See more about these fake accounts and check out the AI-generated images here.