Russians hack local radio to broadcast propaganda

The best propaganda is in the old pots: awith, for example, a simple radio set. Russian soldiers looted a lot of things from the Ukrainian villages they occupied for eight months in the Kharkiv region: food, wheat, refrigerators, but also radio equipment. And to the great misfortune of a small local radio station near Izioum, the Russian soldiers, instead of reselling the control room and transmitters, decided to imitate the original radio station and broadcast false information on another frequency.

The two radios are alike like two drops of water, impossible to differentiate the original program from “its pirated version“. Both skins come from Slobojanske FM radio, broadcast on two different frequencies.

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These are two loyal listeners who spotted the deception because they were picking up the radio outside their usual geographical area. Mikahilo, the director of Slobojanske FM immediately understood where the problem came from. The Russian soldiers had looted one of their offices before fleeing. “Our transmitters, our computers were stolen, over there, there were of course all our files, our playlists, our soundtracks, our jingles.”

A pro-Russian radio disguised as Ukrainian radio

Mykhailo and the owner of the radio, Olena thought so far of simple looting but the pirate radio starts broadcasting six months later. “At first they broadcast our music, our songs, they would settle down and that for a month, then they started broadcasting newspapers in very rudimentary Ukrainian.”

Example captured on Slobojanske FM, a voice announces the midday news and another voice continues “The goal is to create and use biological weapons, outside Ukraine, with the support of the United States and to create new strains of viruses.”

Olena the owner of the radio is not surprised and complains that she cannot do anything. “Everything that Russia says, for example that our army is retreating, that our men are fleeing abroad, all this constant flow of negative information; that’s not true. That’s their method! It doesn’t surprise me about them. They don’t know how to do better.” Olena immediately notified the authorities.

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Investigators have traced the pirate transmitter to the region of Belgorod, the large neighboring Russian city.