US Business

A Russian outfit hired people off the street and paid them to post online comments intended to give the impression of grassroots support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Facebook owner Meta said Thursday.

The internet has been one of the fronts in the internationally condemned war, with Russia seeking to squelch criticism and promote narratives in support of the attack on its neighbor.

The deception campaign on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms was run by a “troll farm,” a disinformation operation that Meta said included people previously associated with a notorious Russian influence group.

“We’re not talking about a dedicated band of patriotic trolls,” Meta threat disruption director David Agranovich told AFP. “They were faking it, people were literally being hired off the street.”

The effort came to light after a reporter for Russian news outlet Fontanka infiltrated the operation by getting a job at its St. Petersburg office, drawing Meta’s attention.

Some of the people involved in the troll farm were previously associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian group that has been linked to election meddling in the United States and other countries since at least 2016, Meta said.

US authorities have offered a $10 million reward for information on election interference, and specifically is seeking details on IRA.

Meta took down the network days after Fontanka reported in April about the group, which had advertised jobs for “spammers, commenters, content analysts, designers and programmers”.

The “poorly” run operation bore similarities to efforts by the IRA some nine years ago in the way it hired just about anyone to help with online deception, Meta global threat intelligence lead Ben Nimmo told AFP.

“It’s like 2013 is calling and it wants its troll farm back,” Nimmo quipped. “It’s built on people slumping on bean bags, being paid to run fake accounts and make these posts across the internet.”

Meta’s investigation found trolls aimed comments at people’s content on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.

Trolls apparently worked in shifts seven days per week, got daily lunch breaks and were paid about $440 a month, Meta said.

A twist, Nimmo noted, was that operators also ran a public Telegram channel urging people to leave pro-Russian comments on posts by politicians, influencers or celebrities such as Angelina Jolie or Morgan Freeman then had their trolls tend to the task.

Meta even found instances of some of the hired trolls undermining the deception effort by sprinkling pro-Ukraine comments in with their work, Agranovich said.

Meta said it took down 1,037 Instagram accounts and 45 Facebook accounts involved in the disinformation campaign.

A Russian court on Thursday sentenced US basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison over drug smuggling as US President Joe Biden called the ruling “unacceptable”.

The court “found the defendant guilty” of smuggling and possessing “a significant amount of narcotics”, judge Anna Sotnikova told a court in the town of Khimki just outside Moscow.  

Sotnikova sentenced Griner, one of the world’s greatest basketball players, to nine years in a Russian penal colony and said she would also have to pay a fine of one million rubles ($16,590).

“I love my family,” Griner told journalists after the ruling as the six-foot-nine (2.06 metres) athlete was led away by members of Russia’s law enforcement. 

Her defence team told reporters the 31-year-old — known as BG to her friends and fans — was “very upset” and “very stressed”.

Biden immediately released a statement, calling the Russian court’s sentencing of Griner “unacceptable”.

“Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney,” Biden said in the statement. 

“It’s unacceptable and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends and teammates.”

The US president reiterated that he would “work tirelessly and pursue every possible avenue” to repatriate Griner.

Her trial accelerated in recent days as the United States and Russia discuss a potential prisoner swap that could involve the basketball star. 

The athlete was detained at a Moscow airport in February after she was found carrying vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage. 

The arrest came just days before Moscow launched its military intervention in Ukraine.

– ‘Honest mistake’ –

Prosecutors had earlier requested the two-time Olympic basketball gold medallist and Women’s NBA champion be sentenced to nine and a half years in prison on drug smuggling charges.

Griner’s trial came with tensions soaring between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine that has sparked international condemnation and a litany of Western sanctions. 

“I made an honest mistake and I hope that your ruling doesn’t end my life here,” Griner said earlier on Thursday.

“I want the court to understand it was an honest mistake that I made while rushing, under stress, trying to recover from post-Covid and just trying to get back to my team.”  

Griner pleaded guilty to the charges, but said she did not intend to break the law or use the banned substance in Russia.

Her defence team said they were “very disappointed” by the verdict and would appeal.

“The court completely ignored all the evidence of the defence, and most importantly, the guilty plea,” lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov said in a statement. 

“The verdict is absolutely unreasonable. We will certainly file an appeal.”

– ‘Bringing BG home’ –

Boykov told reporters that the ruling was too harsh and many Russians usually get a suspended sentence for such a crime.

National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) leaders said the athlete’s sentence was “unjustified and unfortunate, but not unexpected”.

“The WNBA and NBA’s commitment to her safe return has not wavered and it is our hope that we are near the end of this process of finally bringing BG home to the United States,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert and NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a joint statement.

Prosecutor Nikolay Vlasenko had requested a prison sentence of nine years and six months for Griner, requesting a term just short of the maximum punishment of 10 years.

Vlasenko said Griner “deliberately” proceeded through the green corridor at customs and stated she had nothing to declare “in order to conceal” the substance.

Standing inside a cage for defendants before the start of the hearing, Griner held up a photo of herself with teammates from the Russian club she plays for. 

Griner was detained when she came to Russia to play club basketball with UMMC Ekaterinburg during the US off-season — a common path for American stars seeking additional income.

The WNBA star said she had permission from a US doctor to use medicinal cannabis to relieve pain from her many injuries.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that Washington had made a “substantial proposal” to Moscow to free Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan, who was imprisoned on espionage charges.

A prisoner swap was also discussed during a call between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday.

The highest-profile Russian prisoner in the United States is Victor Bout, a 55-year-old arms trafficker, dubbed the “Merchant of Death”, who is serving 25 years in jail. 

There is no official confirmation that Washington has offered to exchange him. 

Russia and the United States have already conducted one prisoner swap since the start of Moscow’s Ukraine offensive. 

In April, Washington exchanged former US Marine Trevor Reed for convicted drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko.

The US Justice Department charged four police officers on Thursday over the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in a botched 2020 raid on her home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the officers face federal charges of civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracy, making false statements unconstitutional use of force and obstruction.

“We allege that these offenses resulted in Miss Taylor’s death,” Garland said. “Breonna Taylor should be alive today.”

The deaths of Taylor and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.

The 26-year-old Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020 when they heard a noise at the door.

Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding one police officer.

Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.

Garland said three of the Louisville police officers — Joshua Jaynes, 45, Kyle Meany, 35, and Kelly Goodlett — were involved in the falsification of a search warrant in a drug trafficking case against Taylor’s ex-boyfriend.

They are accused of violating Taylor’s rights by seeking a warrant to search her home when they knew they lacked probable cause.

“We allege that the defendants knew that the affidavit in support of that warrant contained false and misleading information and that it omitted material information,” Garland said.

He added that the officers also allegedly “took steps to cover up their unlawful conduct after Miss Taylor was killed.”

– ‘Huge step towards justice’ –

The fourth police officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with using excessive force by opening fire wildly during the raid which left Taylor dead.

The 46-year-old Hankison had previously been found not guilty in March of this year of state charges of “wanton endangerment” for his actions during the raid on Taylor’s home.

Taylor’s boyfriend Walker said police battered down the door unannounced. The officers insisted they had identified themselves.

Two of the officers involved were fired but Hankison had been the only one to face state charges — which related not to the death of Taylor but to endangering residents of neighboring apartments.

Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who represented Taylor’s family, welcomed the charges filed against the officers.

“Today was a huge step toward justice,” Crump said in a statement.

He said he hopes it “sends a message to all other involved officers that it is time to stop covering up and time to accept responsibility for their roles in causing the death of an innocent, beautiful young Black woman.”

“Because of Breonna Taylor, we can say this is a day that Black women saw equal justice in the United States of America,” Crump went on to say during a press conference with family members.

The city of Louisville, the largest in Kentucky, settled a wrongful death suit with Taylor’s family for $12 million in September 2020.

The Justice Department said violation of a person’s constitutional rights carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment when it results in death or involves an attempt to kill.

Obstruction carries a maximum sentence of 20 years while conspiracy and making false statements are punishable by up to five years in prison.

A US official accused Moscow Thursday of preparing to plant fake evidence to make it look like the recent mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners in an attack on a Russian-controlled prison was caused by Ukraine.

Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame over the strikes on the prison in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka in eastern Ukraine, which Russia said took place overnight on July 29.

On Thursday the US official, who asked not to be named, said that intelligence reports show Russia will doctor the scene at the prison ahead of the possible visits by outside investigators.

“We expect that Russian officials are planning to falsify evidence in order to attribute the attack on Olenivka Prison on 29 July to the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the official told AFP, without sharing the evidence.

“We anticipate that Russian officials will try to frame (Ukraine’s military)… in anticipation of journalists and potential investigators visiting the site of the attack,” the official said.

More than 50 soldiers died in the incident, including troops who had surrendered after weeks of defending the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol. 

Russia has claimed that Ukraine carried out a strike on its own captured fighters, while Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of covering up a deliberate massacre.

Russian television images showed a charred room crammed with burned bed frames but independent experts are so far unclear on what could have caused the damage visible.

The United Nations has announced a fact-finding mission, though it has not yet received final approval from Kyiv or Moscow.

President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed there had been “a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.”

Russia has carried out numerous attacks on civilians in its invasion of Ukraine, with evidence of summary executions and frequent aerial bombing or shelling of civilians. 

In each case, Moscow has either denied committing atrocities or blamed them on Ukraine attacking its own side.

On Tuesday, Russian authorities said that Russian prisoners held by Ukraine had been subjected to “inhuman treatment.”

The US Justice Department charged four police officers on Thursday over the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in a botched 2020 raid on her home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the four officers were being charged with civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracy, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction.

“We allege that these offenses resulted in Miss Taylor’s death,” Garland said.

The deaths of the 26-year-old Taylor and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.

Garland said three of the Louisville police officers — Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Goodlett and Kyle Meany — have been charged with falsifying a search warrant in a suspected drug trafficking case.

They are accused of violating Taylor’s rights by seeking a warrant to search her home when they knew they lacked probable cause.

“We allege that the defendants knew that the affidavit in support of that warrant contained false and misleading information and that it omitted material information,” Garland said.

He added that the officers also allegedly “took steps to cover up their unlawful conduct after Miss Taylor was killed.”

The fourth police officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with using excessive force by opening fire wildly during the raid which left Taylor dead.

Hankison had previously been found not guilty in March of this year of state charges of “wanton endangerment” for his actions during the raid on Taylor’s home.

Taylor, 26, and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020 when they heard a noise at the door.

Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding one police officer.

Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock warrant to make a drug arrest, fired some 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.

While Taylor’s boyfriend Walker said police battered down the door unannounced, the officers insisted they had identified themselves.

Two of the officers involved were fired but Hankison had been the only one to face state charges — which related not to the death of Taylor but to endangering residents of neighboring apartments.

The city of Louisville, the largest in Kentucky, settled a wrongful death suit with Taylor’s family for $12 million in September 2020.

The US Justice Department charged four police officers on Thursday over the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in a botched 2020 raid on her home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the four officers were being charged with civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracy, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction.

The deaths of Taylor and George Floyd, who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.

Garland said three of the officers — Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Goodlett and Kyle Meany — were charged with falsification of a search warrant in a suspected drug trafficking case.

They are accused of violating Taylor’s rights by seeking a warrant to search her home when they knew they lacked probable cause for such a search.

The fourth officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with using excessive force by opening fire wildly during the raid which left Taylor dead.