Yuliia Dukach, Iryna Adam, and Meredith Furbish
Russia’s ongoing territorial occupation of Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions is accompanied by an informational and cultural occupation aimed at flooding local social media communities with messaging designed to foster gratitude and loyalty to Russia. At the same time, this messaging attempts to undermine Ukraine and the Ukrainian government, and to raise doubts about Ukraine’s intentions in the territories currently occupied by Russia. As the most popular digital platform in Eastern Europe, Telegram has become the epicenter of Russian efforts to influence perceptions and opinions of local Ukrainian populations.
This joint report from OpenMinds and the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) analyzes the activity of a network of 3,634 automated accounts that posted pro-Russian comments on Telegram channels between January 2024 and April 2025 targeting Ukrainian populations inside Russian-occupied territories. These accounts crafted tailored messages to target the occupied territories, differentiating their content from that aimed at other audiences across Russia and Ukraine.
Our investigation found that automated Telegram comments targeting local audiences in Ukraine fell into three overarching categories: pro-Russian propaganda, anti-Ukrainian propaganda, and abstract anti-war messaging and calls for peaceful coexistence. Individual narratives were often tailored to respond to current events and changes in local conditions, such as power or water outages, but there was also evidence of proactive narratives initiated by the network unrelated to external events.
The bot network used similar messaging when targeting channels based in Russia; however, a significantly larger share of comments targeting the occupied territory channels emphasized positive portrayals of Russian culture and government. Across the sixty-nine narrative themes identified (see appendix), the bot network pushed essentially the same menu of talking points in both Russia-wide and occupied territory channels. What differentiates the content aimed at the occupied territories from that aimed at a wider Russian audience is the proportion of talking points: themes that praised Russian culture, social services, and governance dominated in occupied territory-based channels, accounting for a markedly higher share of content than in Russia-based channels.
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