Putins Armee der Trolle

Not only Putin's military apparatus, but also his propaganda machine has been running at full speed since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022: online, the Russian government is waging a cyberwar against unwanted civilians, politicians, and institutions both domestically and abroad. In her debut "Putin's Army of Trolls," the award-winning Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro, who has faced persecution for her critical reporting, reveals the strategies behind the Kremlin's propaganda battle. She describes how internet trolls, orchestrated by the Russian state apparatus, systematically incite against opposition figures, media outlets, and NGOs, working almost unnoticed to destabilize Western democracies, such as by deliberately inflaming political discord within the European Union and massively influencing voter perceptions ahead of the 2016 US elections and the Brexit referendum. Aro's shocking accounts, which incorporate insider reports and her own traumatic experiences with Putin's trolls, leave no doubt that Russia is employing all tactics of cyber warfare, including internet espionage, social media trolling, and deepfakes, to spread misinformation and eliminate its enemies. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Kremlin's online propaganda as a fundamental component of Russian warfare and seeks to counter it.