Former US Navy officer ran pro-Russian Donbass Devushka account
Sarah Bils, a former US Navy officer, was involved in the management of the pro-Russian social media account Donbass Devushka, which leaked at least four classified documents.
Source: The WSJ, The Insider
Quote: "One of the biggest spreaders of pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda, who posed online as a Russian Jewish woman from Luhansk, turned out to be a middle-aged divorced woman from New Jersey and a US Navy veteran. She was exposed by members of the North Atlantic Fella Organisation (NAFO), an online community that fights Russian propaganda."
"The NAFO team compared photos and other information and found that the ‘girl's’ real name is Sarah Bils, but she had recently officially changed it to a different, more Russian name. Bils is a former US Navy non-commissioned officer, recently released from active duty, born in the United States and living in Oak Harbor, Washington, near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station where she once served."
Details: The propagandist with the nickname Donbass Devushka [Donbas Girl - ed.] (at different times she has also used the pseudonyms Mila Medvedev, @luganskforlife, CheburekiVibes, MeatballSubZero, YuGopnik, GhostofLugansk) has her own Telegram channel, Twitter account and YouTube channel, where she posts her podcast. She has about 135,000 followers.
On Twitter, Donbass Devushka posted filtered photos of herself and wrote that her name was Mila.
It is reported that four classified documents were made public through Donbass Devushka. At the same time, The WSJ specified that there is no evidence that Bils used her access to classified data to steal it during her service.
Bils herself told the outlet that she was only one of 15 people "around the world" who manage the channel. She refused to name the other administrators.
Background:
- Bellingcat investigators have found that the recently published US classified documents on the war in Ukraine were posted on 1 and 2 March on a Discord server called WowMao, but the original source could be even older.
- On Friday, 14 April, Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts National Guard, was charged in the case of the leaking of classified documents from the US Department of Defene.
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