An image from the game ‘AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron’ has been used by the Russian defence ministry as ‘irrefutable evidence’ of cooperation between US forces and Islamic State militants in Syria.
The photographs appeared on Facebook posts from the official account posted on Tuesday morning, which accused the US of providing air cover for an Islamic State convoy with the aim of using the fighters to further US interests.
“The US are actually covering the ISIS combat units to recover their combat capabilities, redeploy, and use them to promote the American interests in the Middle East.”
The propaganda’s connection to the two-year old game was discovered by people on Twitter and laid out in a post by Bellingcat researcher Eliot Higgans, currently a visiting scholar at King’s College. Another of the images used was taken from an existing Iraqi Ministry of Defense video.
The game, developed for smartphones and shown in videos posted by what appears to be a now-defunct company, allows users to destroy enemy vehicles from the controls of the AC-130.
The posts for both Twitter and Facebook were deleted (a web cache of the Facebook page is available).
“The posts for both Twitter and Facebook were deleted (a web cache of the Facebook page is available).”
Actually the posts are still up on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/CITeam_en/status/930459811354959872
Sorry wrong link:
https://twitter.com/mod_russia
Obviously the B-team was on duty that day in Russia’s cyber-warfare centre…..
Not the first time they have done that either.
Russia has turned into a laughing stock. No credibility and acting like the sulky child in the corner of the playground. Shame really as only 15 years ago its seemed like it had turned the corner.
The Russians are desperate to divide and rule.
trying maximum effort to split western alliance apart as a cohesive whole. Although the EU are doing a good job of starting that process for them.
As long as Western and world wide media are alert to these ploys and do not give the Russians any air time it will be fine. Someone is going to be sent to Siberia because of this schoolboy error.
The problem is not so much the easy to debunk reports like this. It the use of trolls across the Internet to amplify radical views which are worrying. There is evidence that we have seen real polarisation between views across our Society ( brexit vs remain, far right vs left, feminism vs transgender etc). The Internet tends to create self fulfilling sounding rooms where views are not challenged and become more radical, released into the real world this creates significant and damaging social tension. There is seems to be mounting evidence that the Russia are flaming theses views. the brexit referendum is classic, in that they trolled lies and inflammatory evidence on both sides of the debate, not so much to support one side but to sow decent and conflict in our society. They are following a great tradition as the USSR did this during the Cold War.