Thread: Pro-Kremlin accounts boosted accusations of fraud after Scottish #indyref. #ElectionWatch @DFRLab medium.com/dfrlab/electio…
Scotland voted on September 18, 2014. "Yes" leader Alex Salmond conceded defeat early on Sep 19. bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-sco…
While the results were still coming out, the Russian election observer said that the vote "didn't meet international standards".
Videos claiming fraud started circulating. Most accounts sharing them looked Scottish; this is one of the ones that didn't:
This account shared one "fraud" video six times in 90 minutes, per recent machine scan (note that the scan won't pick up tweets deleted earlier):
The account also posts Kremlin / pro-Kremlin messaging on MH17 (note the language errors, characteristic of a native Russian speaker):
It also shares Kremlin outlet RT on MH17, and denies the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
It also posts on Russian doping, Nemtsov and the 2015 Turkey shootdown. These are all positions known Kremlin trolls have taken.
It's not the only one. This account usually posts retweets on Russia and Ukraine issues, sometimes in Russian:
It posts on Ukraine and "Nazis", a common Kremlin theme:
On Sept 19, it retweeted the same video on Scottish indyref "rigging", in between its usual Ukraine traffic.
Per machine scan, 671 users shared that "fraud" video (more probably have been deleted since). Eyeball scan of first 100 showed > a dozen more or less pro-Kremlin ones.
This was one of them. Seven posts (mostly retweets) on the first video, again per machine scan:
The same account shared another video claiming voter fraud, too:
This account shares Kremlin-style messaging on Ukraine:
It shares Kremlin-style / conspiratorial messaging on Turkey and Syria (note the source is Global Research):
It also attacks anti-corruption protests in Russia:
It wasn't the first account to share that second video, though. That honor goes to this one, whose profile pic comes from Fox series "Fringe":
It kicked off the video early on September 19, 2014, at 6.20am local time:
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