Russians accused of interfering in midterms

Group allegedly sows division on social media

Federal prosecutors say Russians working for a close ally of President Vladimir Putin engaged in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the midterm elections.

WASHINGTON — Russians working for a close ally of President Vladimir Putin engaged in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the midterm elections, federal prosecutors said Friday in unsealing a criminal complaint against one of them.

The woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, was involved in an effort “to spread distrust toward candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system,” prosecutors said.

Court documents provided a detailed look into Russian efforts to “sow division and discord” in the U.S. political system, thanks in part to Khusyaynova, a fastidious manager and bookkeeper.

Khusyaynova managed millions of dollars for a company owned by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch sometimes called “Putin’s chef.” He was indicted in February on charges of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Some of the money Khusyaynova managed was spent on advertising on social media in the United States, buying internet domain names and “promoting news postings on social networks.”

The conspirators seized on divisions in U.S. politics, prosecutors said, including immigration, guns, race relations, women and even the debate over the protests by NFL players during the national anthem.

According to the complaint, Russia’s trolls did not limit themselves to either a liberal or conservative position, and often wrote from both viewpoints on the same issue. They developed strategies for blending in to partisan U.S. audiences.

“If you write posts in a liberal group ... you must not use Breitbart titles,” read one message sent to the Russian group, referring to the conservative U.S. news site. “On the contrary, if you write posts in a conservative group, do not use Washington Post or BuzzFeed’s titles.”

The group also gave suggestions, some of them racist, for reaching specific affinity groups. One member suggested keeping posts simple when they were aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups of color, writing that “colored LGBT are less sophisticated than white; therefore, complicated phrases and messages do not work.”

Framing suggestions often accompanied news stories shared by the group’s members, according to the complaint. One story, originally posted by the conservative news site World Net Daily, was titled “The 8 dirtiest scandals of Robert Mueller no one is talking about.” When instructing a group member to share the story on social media, an unnamed member of the Russian group instructed a fellow member to “emphasize that the work of this commission is damaging to the country and is aimed to declare impeachment of Trump,” according to the complaint.

U.S. intelligence agencies said separately Friday that they had no evidence that physical voting systems have been compromised.