The largest Telegram channels: how are they related to people's deputies and who is the bridge for Russian content?

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August 2, 2023

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Danger of anonymity

In Ukraine, there are more than a hundred public political or news Telegram channels with an audience of more than 100,000 people. And this is without taking into account the personal pages of opinion leaders, bloggers and public figures. In addition, Telegram has government representatives — from the president to the heads of regional administrations and mayors.

Among such political and news resources, Trukha Ukraina is the largest, with more than 2.7 million subscribers. Its founder is a well-known Kharkiv businessman Maksym Lavrynenko. In addition to the all-Ukrainian channel, almost all major cities are represented by regional channels in this network. There are more than 100 pages with the word "Trukha" in the title - this is both the network and clones.

Photo: HONEST

The well-known owner of another channel from the top ten — Ukraine Now. It is developed by the Institute of Cognitive Modeling, which is managed by Dmytro Tsarenko and Viktor Berezenko. The other eight most popular resources are anonymous. Considering the state of war, two are particularly interesting - "Legitimny" and "Resident". 

Back in 2020, Texty.org wrote that these two resources became the most popular in Telegram among deputies from "Servant of the People". Already a year later , the SBU announced that they were coordinated by Russian special services . Last summer, they warned about this again, but as we can see, the channels are still not only available in Ukraine, but also popular thanks to the alleged insider information they publish.

Photo: HONEST

In a broader perspective, it is "Legitimny", "Resident" and several other channels that act as a kind of bridge between the Russian and Ukrainian segments of Telegram. This proves network analysis HONEST.

In terms of the number of connections, the most influential in this group are "Spletnitsa", "Zerada" and "Observer". This includes a total of 36 channels that spread Russian propaganda.

It is interesting that some current politicians and the already banned Sharia Party are also connected with them . By the way, although she was banned by the court back in September of last year, considering the separate page, she was engaged in allegedly charitable activities for half a year. The last post about "aid to Kherson" was dated March 6, 2023.

Photo: HONEST

As for connections with politicians, two surnames should be singled out here. These are People's Deputies Maksym Buzhanskyi ("Servant of the People") and Oleksandr Dubinskyi (non-factional), both of whom are members of the Register of Councilors, which is run by the CHESNO Movement. They regularly reposted the posts of these channels. For its part, "Resident" mentioned Buzhansky more than 220 times, and Dubinsky more than 180 times. By the way, Dubinsky filed a lawsuit against the CHESNO Movement and demands that he be removed from the Register of Advisers.

It is worth noting that Danylo Hetmantsev, a People's Deputy from "Servant of the People", who currently heads the tax committee of the Verkhovna Rada, openly recommended subscribing to "Resident" already after the SBU statement about the channel's ties with Russian special services.

In the case of cooperation with these channels, the question arises not only of openness and integrity of spending on political advertising. The aspect of state security is much more important, because some people's deputies not only from the banned OPZZ, but also from the pro-government party "Servant of the People" have been legitimizing propagandists for years. At the same time, the state, civil society and international partners are forced to spend resources to deal with the consequences.

At the same time, other groups of the Ukrainian segment are much more difficult to distinguish. For example, registered mass media are linked, but they are also reposted by anonymous channels. Statistically, this unites them into one group. However, certain political connections are still followed.

How are anonymous channels related to politicians?

Statistics of reposts and network analysis can provide insight into connections with politicians. This is how it was possible to discover the connections of the propaganda channels with Buzhanskyi and Dubinskyi. However, it is important to note that the context of the repost or mention is not taken into account when counting.

In addition, "MediaKiller", which is also part of the "Legitimnogo" group, mentioned people's deputy Geo Leros (non-factional). Mostly it was the distribution of the MP's video blogs. At the same time, mass media with well-known owners almost did not repost them.

Photo: HONEST

Such cooperation with such anonymous channels is a marker of the fact that the politician is focused not just on the Telegram platform, but on a specific audience. The propaganda group is distinguished by the format of the posts — they mostly focus on "inside" information about the work of the parliament or the President's Office. On the one hand, this provides them with a share of popularity, on the other hand, such formats are less interesting to the media.

However, it is important to note that the popularity of such channels is largely inflated or heated artificially. For example, on the night of July 15, more than 12,000 accounts signed up for "Legitimnogo" in one hour. The very next night, also in an hour, more than 10,000 people subscribed to "Resident". Similar increases in the number of subscribers - just as gratuitous, although less large-scale - are characteristic of Dubinsky as well.

Another obvious cluster includes People's Deputies from "European Solidarity" Petro Poroshenko, Oleksiy Honcharenko and Iryna Gerashchenko. Among the traditional mass media, they were reposted by "Pryamiy" and "Channel 5", which are connected to Poroshenko - and it is his posts that are the most. At the same time, the leader in terms of the total number of reposts and subscribers is Oleksiy Goncharenko.

Among the large anonymous channels, "Ukraine 24/7 - News", "Fashik Donetsky" and "Ukrainian Offensive #UkrTg" are most closely related to them.

As for the representatives of the "Servant of the People", at first glance, it may seem that they have little connection in the Telegram environment. However, the broader picture of the segment points to something else — the channels reposting the posts of the faction head Davyd Arakhamia are often the same ones that repost Danylo Hetmantsev and even Artem Dmytruk. Currently, he is a representative of the "Restoration of Ukraine" group, but until 2021 he was a member of the "Servants of the People" faction.

In addition, this group also includes Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov , Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, Head of OP Andriy Yermak, his former deputy Kyrylo Tymoshenko, several ministries and heads of OVA. That is, they are all connected with the current government.

People's deputy from "Holos" Yaroslav Zheleznyak also joined this group. We will remind that, according to the results of a preliminary study of the CHESNO Movement, although Zheleznyak and Hetmantsev are included in the same group as Dubinsky and Buzhansky, in a broader perspective they interact to a large extent with different groups of channels.

Among the large Telegram resources, this segment includes "Prestupnosti.NET", "Vertikal", "Armed Forces of Ukraine". War with the Occupiers" (this is not an official page of the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as a number of regional ones.

Photo: HONEST

Of special interest is the connection with the current politicians of the largest network of Ukrainian channels "Truha" — both national and regional. Although they mostly repost each other, there are a few exceptions. Yes, MP from "Servant of the People" Maria Mezentseva is clearly connected with them.

She was elected by Kharkiv residents (168th district). It was from Kharkiv that "Truha" began. On the main and Kharkiv pages of the network, she is regularly mentioned in the context of both parliamentary and humanitarian activities. But it did not help the development of Mezentseva's Telegram channel.

The People's Deputy, in her turn, openly supported the administrators of "Trukha" when a photo of the alleged correspondence between the founder of the channel Maksym Lavrynenko and a Russian propagandist ("Rybar" channel) got into the network. At the same time, Oleksiy Honcharenko took Lavrynenko's side.

Photo: screen

Photo: screenshot

It is also interesting that the Telegram channels of the parties are not particularly popular both among subscribers and among other channels. Even the most popular of them, the "European Solidarity" channel, mainly interacts with those who are already connected with the party.

Advertising of people's deputies

Telegram monitoring is complicated by two factors. The first is the direct interaction of advertisers with channel administrators, and therefore the absence of reliable data, for example, about the budget. The second is that reposts alone are not enough to conclude whether a particular post is really advertising.

During June 2023, on the 100 largest Telegram pages, the HONEST Movement recorded at least 23 posts of an advertising nature concerning people's deputies. Almost half of them covered the activities of Petro Poroshenko and his named foundation.

A series of posts with an appeal to subscribe to a number of channels, including those of Oleksiy Honcharenko and Iryna Gerashchenko, are openly advertising. In total, they covered 34 different channels, which often sympathize with "European solidarity".

This is both Taras Chornovil, a political technologist close to the party, and the already mentioned "Fashik Donetsky".

Photo: HONEST

Such advertising practice is not new. Such posts with almost identical content have been posted at least 35 times since 2021.

"I was approached and offered to post these channels in exchange. That is, they posted a link to my channel. This is done for the integration of audiences," Honcharenko explains.

The campaign of Yulia Tymoshenko, head of Batkivshchyna, is illustrative. In June, several channels published reports that Tymoshenko took part in a charity event organized by the Art Initiative Foundation. Including "Insider UA" and "Ukraine Now: News, War, Russia" wrote about it.

Photo: screen

Photo: screen

In the case of the last channel, the linguistic feature is interesting. The posts of "Ukraine Now" are mainly in Russian, including those concerning the already mentioned Tymoshenko. However, there were at least two advertising posts in Ukrainian in favor of the leader of Batkivshchyna in May, one in June and three in July.

Not only Poroshenko and Tymoshenko wrote about charity on Telegram channels. Thus, a number of Kharkiv pages ("Truha", "Kharkov 1654", "Kharkov Life | Kharkiv") wrote about two deputies from "Servant of the People" - Pavlo Yakymenko and Oleksiy Krasov.

Photo: screen

Photo: screen

Tracking how much Ukrainian politicians actually spend on Telegram advertising campaigns seems like an almost impossible task. The problem is not only the lack of party financial reports from 2020. Even with the restoration of the obligation to report, the question arises as to how to prove that the post was really advertising, because mostly it is not marked.

And if the services were really provided, due to the specifics of the platform, we do not know their exact cost. Telegram allows you to reach a large audience that trusts channels. That is why it is important to monitor which politicians are using this social network and how, even though the next election is not close yet.

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