Putin’s regime considers that every critical voice is an enemy. Kremlin is targeting journalists, activists and politicians. An online war against those who criticise Russia’s acts on a both domestic and international level and express support to the Russian democratic dissent is deployed.
Now a new book revealing modern information warfare practices is coming.
Putin’s trolls – true stories from the Russian information war will appear on September 24 in Finland. Authored by the Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro, it presents several new findings from the Kremlin troll war in Finland and abroad.
Well-documented true stories show that Putin’s Russia does not shy away from the darkest means of eliminating its opponents through cyber-espionage, sometrolls, fake news, cyber-attacks, assassination attacks.
Aro works for Finland’s public service broadcaster Yle. In September 2014, she starts to investigate pro-Russian Internet trolls. As a consequence she became a victim of their activities herself.
According to the court files, Aro had become the subject of a multi-year harassment campaign by pro-Russian trolls after she began reporting in 2014 on Russian propaganda and disinformation that was being spread in Finland on social media.
In the four years that followed, her personal information was published online, her location was tracked, and she received numerous death threats. She even received a text from someone pretending to be her father, who had passed away several years earlier.
Jessikka Aro received the Bonnier Grand Journalist Award 2016.
