When Moscow first invaded Ukraine in 2014, a gaggle of volunteers within the small Baltic state of Lithuania, proper on Russia’s doorstep, felt compelled to do one thing.

They determined to name themselves The Elves, evoking the benevolent legendary creatures who quietly hammer away behind the scenes.

Their chief, who speaks in a brusque and authoritative voice, goes by the pseudonym The Hawk. Most of them don’t use their actual names on-line to make it tougher for Russian trolls to trace them down.

The Hawk noticed Lithuania — a former Soviet state that broke away some 30 years in the past when socialism crumbled — as being notably weak to the Kremlin disinformation machine.

Cautious of its neighbour, the lower than three million-strong nation joined the EU and NATO in 2004, enabling it to higher defend itself from malign affect each militarily and politically.

However the 2014 battle in Ukraine set off an unprecedented onslaught of disinformation concentrating on nations that didn’t toe the Moscow line.

“We had a sense that numerous troll farms began to work in opposition to Lithuania, spreading the same old lies: ‘NATO is an occupier, the EU is a failed challenge, and Lithuania is a failed nation,’” he informed Euronews.

So The Elves — all unpaid volunteers whose day jobs vary from accountants to media or IT specialists — developed their very own technique to counter the menace.

Working throughout almost a dozen nations in Europe, they monitor faux pro-Kremlin profiles and pages on social media, notably on Fb, and debunk disinformation by easy explanations and even memes.

The objective is to maintain the concerted efforts by Russian trolls to infect the net world at bay — or a minimum of minimise its affect.

Content material needs to be simple, making info accessible and comprehensible for broad swathes of the inhabitants.

“We do it on a stage that’s comprehensible to common folks — we attempt to clarify what the disinformation is. We struggle in opposition to poisonous trolls by making an attempt to take them off social networks, and by reporting them in an organised means,” The Hawk mentioned.

Mass reporting content material or customers was an web safety loophole trolls cherished utilizing to close down accounts by journalists or free speech activists — one well-known case is Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, who grew to become a sufferer of troll exercise whereas reporting on Russian disinformation efforts.

Now The Elves are utilizing the instruments at their disposal to hit again.

Their reasoning, based on The Hawk, is easy: what issues is the reality, and there are not any set guidelines on the way it needs to be disseminated.

Combating disinformation in a battle launched by disinformation

For the reason that battle started, the Lithuanian Elves actively took half in denial-of-service or DDOS assaults on Russian and Belarusian state establishments, propaganda retailers and infrastructure websites.

These assaults, which additionally noticed participation by Nameless, a infamous activist hacking group, knocked out entry to web sites starting from non-public banks to RT and Sputnik and the Russian Ministry of Defence for days on finish.

In response to The Hawk, the struggle happening on-line is a means “to assist our brothers in Ukraine”.

“That is extra motivation — to unfold details about what is basically occurring, and to one way or the other attain Russia, to tell the Russian folks that it is a actual battle, not a bloody ‘particular operation’,” he mentioned.

However the job shouldn’t be easy, and it’s an on a regular basis wrestle in Lithuania in addition to the opposite 11 nations the place The Elves now have a presence.

Ever for the reason that Russian invasion started on 24 February, what was once far more rigorously crafted messaging from Moscow become an outright twisting of info and the creation of conspiracy theories.

“Now they’re spreading completely loopy lies. They’re not even eager about find out how to do it in knowledgeable means, it’s simply completely wild disinformation,” The Hawk said.

“They’re fairly disorganised and fairly determined. But it surely doesn’t imply they’re not aggressive. They’re nonetheless investing some huge cash into disinformation and cyberattacks as nicely.”

Nameless heroes

Aggressiveness and the accompanying sense of hazard are the principle the explanation why the likes of The Hawk use a pseudonym to today.

Even these exterior of Elves’ circles, like Dmitri Teperik, chief government of the Worldwide Centre for Defence and Safety in Tallinn, had their brush with the aggressive pushback from pro-Russian voices.

“I bear in mind from 2014 when the Crimea was occupied by Russia and the battle in Donbas began,” Teperik recalled for Euronews, “we engaged many civilian activists in Estonia for Ukraine assist, and likewise tried to remove Russian propaganda from our social media networks.”

“Myself and my colleagues had been instantly intimidated, verbally attacked and labelled fascists by pro-Kremlin proxies and different brokers of affect.

“So, the menace is actual, and the very best we will do is be very cautious and discern the trolls amongst us, what their actions and objectives are,” he mentioned.

Whereas in Lithuania The Elves could be extra directed in direction of the sources of disinformation themselves, Estonian fighters in opposition to Kremlin propaganda are keener on understanding and approaching those that are “informationally weak”.

“In Estonia, we principally take note of these teams inside our society whose media consumption patterns are completely different from the mainstream, so generally we’re speaking concerning the native Russian communities, however throughout the corona disaster, there have been people who find themselves anti-vaccination activists and so forth,” Teperik explains.

Estonia, too, shares a border with Russia, and for many years for the reason that nation’s independence, many within the nation felt they had been below direct menace from Moscow.

The worldwide curiosity sparked by the most recent invasion of Ukraine has lastly legitimised those that have been lengthy warning the remainder of the continent and the world concerning the risks of Vladimir Putin.

But they really feel solely considerably vindicated, given the human value it took for others to lastly begin paying consideration, Teperik argues.

“In fact, they missed our warnings and the alerts we’ve been sending ranging from 2007-08 after which 2014.”

“Now we see that the understanding of Russia’s aggressiveness is getting broader, however there’s nonetheless some form of naive hope amongst Western politicians in Germany, France and the US that perhaps Putin might be satisfied to face again away from Ukraine they usually can proceed with the enterprise as ordinary.”

“The very harsh determination should be made already now with a purpose to safe the EU and NATO, but additionally with a purpose to assist nations like Ukraine, Moldova or Georgia to not be attacked by aggressive Russia,” Teperik concluded.

Trolls additionally goal Russia’s ‘close to overseas’ in Central Europe

Even nations that aren’t in Russia’s fast neighborhood have Moscow’s impact on creating confusion about what’s actual and what’s not, but additionally strengthening assist for Putin-friendly politicians.

Bohumil Kartous, the spokesperson for the Czech Elves and CEO of the Prague Innovation Institute, says that the home pro-Kremlin teams principally centered on selling Czech populist political events, notably SPD and the Communist Occasion.

However the battle made them shift their deal with discrediting the politicians in energy as a substitute.

“Now, after the battle exploded, a combination of blended narratives is emitted into the digital area,” Kartous defined to Euronews.

“A few of them are copying Kremlin propaganda, as ordinary, however a few of them attempt to discredit and diminish the stance of the Czech authorities which is strongly pro-Ukrainian.”

“Some even assault the goodwill to assist refugees with an emotional enchantment to ‘what about our [Czech] folks in want,’” Kartous mentioned.

However based on the most recent polls, it appears these makes an attempt have had virtually no impression, with the Czech public persevering with to be firmly in favour of serving to Ukraine and its refugees.

But Kartous and the Czech Elves, who monitor and analyse recognized disinformation-peddling web sites and numerous pro-Kremlin teams and pages on Fb, consider the tide in public assist would possibly flip because the battle goes on.

“Issues might change if the aggression lasts a very long time and individuals are always uncovered to doubts about elevated expenditure and reasoning alongside the strains of ‘why ought to we assist these folks.’”

“That’s why we consider it’s essential to tackle sources of disinformation just like shutting down Kremlin amplifiers Sputnik and RT,” Kartous mentioned.

Why consider The Elves?

Neighbouring Slovakia, which along with the Czech Republic constituted Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite tv for pc state that broke away and peacefully cut up up in 1993, additionally has its batch of Elves.

Tomáš Kriššák, a cognitive safety knowledgeable and member of the board of advisors of the Central European Digital Media Observatory, says that for a few years he felt alone in declaring Moscow’s malign interference in a society the place the assist for Russia is cut up into two equal components.

“I’ve labored on this subject for 12 years and more often than not I felt actually determined. I felt there was no that means and no sense to do that as a result of everyone thought we had been simply making this up,” Kriššák informed Euronews.

“However once I met The Hawk, I understood that there are extra folks like me, that there are extra people who find themselves really conscious of this challenge, and we began to kind a community, which can also be vital while you don’t wish to really feel alone and loopy.”

Though every nation is completely different, and Russian disinformation makes positive to isolate the precise entry factors for disinformation on a rustic by nation foundation, a few of the disinformation patterns are the identical, Kriššák believes.

“Plenty of individuals are bandwagoning with Putin, simply repeating the lies and I’d say legal apologies of what’s occurring in Ukraine.”

“They began in 2012 with fringe media that created conspiracy theories. That helped create a decentralised motion, however in 2014 after the primary invasion of Ukraine, they actually stepped up their sport,” he mentioned.

Equally to the Czech Republic, the Kremlin disinformation actors in Slovakia had been primarily centered on inspiring these Slovakians sad with the route their nation was headed in by creating an curiosity in having a relationship with Russia.

This included politicians but additionally NGOs, teachers and even college students, Kriššák mentioned, invoking knowledge gathered by the home NGO Gerulata, which has been monitoring Moscow’s actions within the nation for years.

However after the February invasion, they used Fb pages with tens of hundreds of followers to develop into extra centered on creating an “info chaos” and manufacturing false narratives relating to what the Russian troops had been doing in Ukraine.

“Once they bombed a hospital or a theatre full of civilians [in Mariupol], they merely mentioned they had been bombing Azov troopers hiding within the place.”

The Azov Regiment is a controversial far-right Ukrainian army unit that’s a part of the nation’s Nationwide Guard and options prominently in Russian propaganda.

“They’re making an attempt to depict themselves as ‘the nice guys who’re simply denazifying the nation’ and investing numerous vitality in character assassinations of [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy who they depict as a loser, a junky, a foul actor, you title it. That’s what they do.”

For Kriššák, the Kremlin’s efforts to have an effect on public opinion in Slovakia is a continuation of Russia’s obsession with sustaining affect within the space post-1968, the yr wherein the Soviet Union invaded the nation, sending its tanks to Prague to violently quash efforts to liberalise Czechoslovakia’s communist system.

Czechoslovak activists and protesters on the time had been combating in opposition to pro-Soviet propaganda that the key police used to maintain management over the general public sphere.

“The key police had been diligently poisoning the minds of Slovaks for a lot of, a few years, and Slovaks in a means are a extremely cynical nation — they don’t seem to be sceptical, they’re cynical — and cynicism continues to be misused by propaganda to really persuade folks that everybody is mendacity,” he concluded.

Disinformation – low cost, efficient and constantly underestimated

Ross Burley, the cofounder and government director of Centre for Info Resilience, the UK’s main non-profit devoted to countering disinformation, informed Euronews that the twenty first century has made disinformation a really low cost and efficient weapon.

“Usually the only disinformation campaigns are the best, in addition to those that draw on a kernel of reality after which run with it. The thought is to introduce doubt and confuse,” Burley defined.

Moscow’s claims that US-funded organic laboratories in Ukraine are getting used to provide bioweapons — one other within the line of justifications for the battle — is an effective instance of this, based on Burley.

“It’s one thing that’s within the public consciousness post-covid, but additionally there’s a kernel of reality. There have been laboratories, a few of which have obtained US funding. Now, the purpose of those laboratories was to not develop organic weapons, clearly.”

“But it surely’s nearly introducing doubt and making it interesting to readers in a means. There’s an instructiveness to conspiracies, having that insider info, that form of feeling that you just’re uncovering one thing. All of these issues are very human, they usually faucet into that very, very nicely,” he illustrated.

Countering propaganda requires probably the most expert and never essentially probably the most established figures like distinguished journalists or politicians — one thing that The Elves tapped into early on, Burley defined.

“Definitely again once they began doing it in 2014, nobody else was doing anything on this scale,” Burley mentioned. “This sort of nebulous mannequin that The Elves had of little cells and people working collectively was extremely efficient.”

When the varied Western governments started to consider find out how to utilise civil society actors to try to counter disinformation, they had been solely keen to work with current organisations and firms, Burley identified.

“And you might have a man who’s in his mom’s basement or no matter who’s an absolute genius at these things, however wasn’t being engaged with.”

“Whereas the Elves mannequin was to get the very best folks, probably the most dedicated folks, and produce all of them collectively in a way more collegiate and systematic means,” he defined.

Now, the Elves’ long-term worth and skill to maintain on combating will depend upon defending themselves from threats from each the skin and the within.

“You clearly must watch out with the human intelligence issue and there could be folks making an attempt to infiltrate and that’s the most important hazard,” Burley mentioned.

“If you happen to welcome everyone with open arms, you might be strolling the wolf into the sheep pen, or a fox into the hen coop.”