Russia conducted a massive covert influence operation on the basis of the TikTok social network, which was directed at the former Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksiy Reznikov, and the Ukrainian government in general. The main theme of the fakes was sheer corruption.
The corresponding investigation was conducted by the Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (DFRLab) together with the BBC Verify project.
The campaign was conducted by bots. They posted videos in at least seven languages accusing Reznikov of buying luxury estates and cars, implying that he and the Ukrainian government in general had profited from the war. There were also videos about Reznikovʼs daughter, Anastasia Steinhaus, who allegedly bought a villa in Madrid through a front company in Cyprus. The investigation also mentions the campaign against General Valery Zaluzhny (allegedly bought a villa in Chile).
DFRLab identified thousands of suspicious TikTok accounts that posted similar or almost identical videos. They were accessed through another social network — X (formerly Twitter). The accounts that posted these videos used similar narratives and tweet patterns. They mostly uploaded only one video per newly created account and used AI-generated audio.
TikTok specialists have already discovered more than 12,800 accounts that participated in the operation. In total, they had more than 847 thousand subscribers. According to preliminary estimates, they generated hundreds of millions of views.
TikTok has described it as the largest hacking operation ever discovered on the platform and believes it to be Russian.