A related issue perhaps.....
Russia Launches Next Deadly Phase of Hybrid War on Ukraine
.......Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, says Russia has entered into a new phase of its campaign to destabilise Ukraine, with the 22 February attack in Kharkiv just one of a series of bombings orchestrated by Russian spy services, the FSB and the GRU. “It starts with the FSB’s security centres 16 and 18, operating out of Skolkovo, Russia,” says Vitaliy Naida, head of the SBU department responsible for intercepting online traffic. “These centres are in charge of information warfare. They send out propaganda, false information via social media. Re-captioned images from Syria, war crimes from Serbia – they’re used to radicalise and then recruit Ukrainians.”
He takes a suspected three-man terror cell from Dnipropretovsk who are currently on trial as an example and walks Newsweek through the evidence, including photographs and video of weapons with Russian serial numbers and intercepted communications. Passed instructions and weapons via dead-drops, the cell never met their handlers.
“They were recruited by the FSB. Instructions were initially given in private messages via internet and in some cases Vkontakte [a Russian social network],” Naida says. “When they were detained and arrested, in their houses we found explosives, grenades, means of communications and printed messages – where to set explosives, where they should be placed to create panic.” Naida’s unit monitors roughly 600 “anti-Ukrainian” social network groups with hundreds of thousands of members. So far it has intercepted communications between 29 prolific group administrators and individuals using accounts linked to the Russian security services.
A cursory internet search reveals separatist groups are no longer just Ukraine’s problem. This year Armenia, the Baltic countries, Moldova and Poland have suddenly acquired new “People’s Republic” pages on social media, some overtly pro-Russian, others simply stoking ethnic tensions between majority and minority populations in the same city or country – be they Russians and Latvians, or Poles and Lithuanians.........