MOSCOW — Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, said it has linked Belarus’s main security service, the KGB, to fake accounts on its social media platforms that criticized Poland during the countries’ recent border standoff.
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Tensions between Belarus and the European Union have spiked with the 27-nation bloc accusing Minsk of orchestrating the flow of mostly Middle Eastern migrants to its border with Poland and Lithuania as revenge for sanctions.
More than 40 Facebook accounts, five Groups, and four Instagram accounts posed as journalists and activists from the E.U., particularly Poland and Lithuania, Meta said in an announcement Wednesday. The accounts posted criticism of Poland in English, Polish, and Kurdish, including pictures and videos about Polish border guards allegedly violating migrants’ rights.
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The accounts had little reach: Meta said less than 1,400 people joined one or more of these Groups, and less than 200 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts. The accounts have since been removed.
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“Although the people behind it attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to the Belarusian KGB,” Meta said.
Meta did not reveal its methodology for tying the accounts to the Belarusian intelligence agency.
Since Western intelligence agencies accused Russian hackers of using fake social media accounts to spread propaganda during the 2016 U.S. election, similar influence campaigns have become a common tool by other governments in the region.
Belarus and Russia’s security agencies are closely linked and often cooperate; the “KGB” name is a holdover from the Soviet Union, when the countries’ intelligence organs were under one umbrella.
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Last month, researchers from the cybersecurity company Mandiant linked with “high confidence” the activities of the Ghostwriter hacking group with the Belarusian government. The group “targeted a wide variety of governmental and private sector entities, with a focus in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Germany,” Mandiant said.
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Thousands of migrants wishing to enter the E.U. got stuck at the Belarus-Poland border last month, pushed by Belarusian guards to try to make it across but then deported by Poland if they did. More than 1,000 Iraqis, mostly Kurds, have since left the region on repatriation flights. But many migrants remain at a warehouse in Belarus’s Grodno region near the border.
Belarusian state media has attempted to portray the Polish border guards’ treatment of the migrants as “fascist” and violent.
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An example of one allegedly fake account that Meta provided in its announcement followed that trend. Writing in Polish, the poster said that “Poland distorts the events on the border more and more, unjustifiably accusing the Belarusian side, thus trying to divert attention from the illegal activities of Polish security forces in relation to refugees.”
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Some migrants have said that Belarusian forces beat them if they failed to cross into Poland. They have also accused Polish guards of harsh treatment.
To make the accounts more convincing, some used profile photos likely generated using artificial intelligence techniques, Meta said.
The company also said it removed 31 Facebook accounts, four Groups, two Facebook Events and four Instagram accounts that it believes originated in Poland and targeted Belarus and Iraq. Those allegedly fake accounts posed as migrants from the Middle East posting about the border crisis.
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Meta did not link the accounts to a specific group.
“These fake personas claimed to be sharing their own negative experiences of trying to get from Belarus to Poland and posted about migrants’ difficult lives in Europe,” Meta said. “They also posted about Poland’s strict anti-migrant policies and anti-migrant neo-Nazi activity in Poland. They also shared links to news articles criticizing the Belarusian government’s handling of the border crisis and off-platform videos alleging migrant abuse in Europe.”
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One account that was removed “planned a protest event in Minsk that it advertised on Facebook. Local media publicly reported the planning of this event,” Meta said. People expressed interest in the event on Facebook, but it’s unclear if it occurred.
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