Putin’s mysterious Facebook ‘superfans’ on a mission – BBC News

Content includes photos and messages praising the Russian leader, written in a number of languages, including English, Russian, Farsi, Arabic and Khmer.

Digging into the details of the people driving most of the content, it emerged that many of the fans listed as administrators of the groups have duplicate accounts under the same name.

These accounts generally follow each other and sometimes post heart-warming messages or send heart emojis to each other.

One, named Marine, who says her location is Syria, uses three separate accounts to generate support for the president.

Another moderator, Victoria, from Cambodia, has been pushing content in a Khmer language group.

But a man in Kenya, called Raj, who’s in several of these groups and includes “Putin” at the end of his name on Facebook, did answer the phone when we rang.

She told us it was the people already running the groups and said that she wasn’t paid for her efforts.

And the page also had a habit of tagging people in its messages about Mr Putin, including users identified by researchers as having duplicate accounts.

DFRLab documented how one Putin-impersonator account posting in Arabic had paid for adverts targeting users in several countries, including Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Lebanon, and Tunisia.

Another prominent Putin page, posted in Arabic, used to be managed by a man who is also a big fan of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

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