Mystery as ‘Russian woman posing as local resident’ targets newspapers with pro-Brexit letters in ‘disinformation campaign’
Letters purporting to be from a Brexit-supporting Russian woman living in the UK have prompted claims of a targeted “disinformation” campaign after an allegedly “fake persona” was used to send anti-EU messages to regional newspapers.
An investigation by the Bristol Post revealed almost identical messages extolling the benefits of leaving the European Union (EU) had been sent to nine publications around the UK.
Each letter was said to have been sent from the same woman, who claimed to live locally but reportedly used fake addresses from locations as far apart as Bristol and Sunderland.
In the letter sent to the paper, Veronika Oleksychenko claimed Brexit had made her “more inspired and creative”.
She wrote: “I moved to the UK in 2014, from Russia, and I soon settled in Bristol. I think it is a great city to live in. I don’t know about anyone else but for me, I think Brexit has had the strangest effect of making me much more inspired and creative. I suppose it’s been a mix of my new life in this part of the world and then the whole Brexit thing happening.”
She signed off the email: “So Brexit works in mysterious ways perhaps!”
In a subsequent email to the Bristol Post, she requested that her letter be published, a similar version of which was used as “letter of the week” by the Sunderland Echo.
Bristol Post’s senior reporter, Conor Gogarty, first became suspicious after finding no trace of the sender on social media. Ms Oleksychenko told the paper she avoided social media because it was not “actually very ‘social’”.
He subsequently discovered that a similar letter had been sent to other publications and replied to the email address asking for more details about her background.
She was asked for but failed to provide a photograph of her passport and said she had lived in different parts of the UK since emigrating from Russia. The exact year of her arrival was also said to have differed between otherwise almost-identical versions of the letter sent to the Bristol Post and Sunderland Echo.
The paper tracked down the owner of the house given as Ms Oleksychenko’s address in Bristol, who said it was “concerning that someone would use another person’s address”, adding that Brexit made her feel “frustrated” rather than creative.
Alice Stollmeyer, executive director of Defending Democracy, which works to counter disinformation and cyber-attacks, said there were reasons to doubt the source of the letter.
“Even if she ‘doesn’t like social media’ herself, nowadays your name will be somewhere online. I would say that clearly indicates a fake persona,” she told the Bristol Post. "We can’t know if Veronika is really Russian, if that is her real name or even if she is a ‘she’.
“When people think of Russian interference in our democracies, they mostly think of cyberattacks and of bots and trolls spreading disinformation just ahead of the elections. But manipulation via ‘influence operations’ is much more subtle than that – and it’s taking place 365 days per year, not just during elections.”
Mr Gogarty told The Independent: “I don’t think I’ll ever be sure who she is. One theory is it is a troll controlled by Russia, as absurd as it sounds that they would be involved. But it is impossible to know.”
He added: “I sent off an email to her and at that point I wasn’t suspicious, but there were a few things that made alarm bells ring. The address that she had given wasn’t a real address, but after googling her name I saw other publication had printed her letter, and each time she was pretending to be local to the area.”
The Independent contacted Ms Oleksychenko using the email provided but had not received a reply at the time of publication.
