The Government Information Cell (GIC) was set up at the behest of British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that blocks Russian information about the situation in Ukraine, using paid advertising to reach Russian citizens in effort to nullify Kremlin propaganda, The Sunday Telegraph has reported.
Its 35 full-time staff are drawn from departments including the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence, Home Office, Cabinet Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. They are responsible for trawling through online and broadcast material to identify disinformation and tackle it.
Due to the fact that access to social networks of the West is limited in Russia, the GIC instructs advertising agencies to place under the guise of advertising messages that Western politicians need on sites such as VKontakte.
This tactic is designed to ensure that materials such as Prime Minister Johnson’s speech end up on laptops, tablets or mobile phones of people who would never have thought to get the opinion of the British government.
The media unit “is coordinating with embassies abroad to translate and distribute its content before posting it around the world,” the paper said. In particular, according to the newspaper, “officials are now beginning to distribute content in Chinese amid questions about potential Chinese support for Russia.”
