Ukraine’s notorious information warfare unit, the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), reported that on July 23 its head, Ukrainian Defense Forces officer Andriy Kovalenko, and his team met with American racist media and Trump “influencer” Laura Loomer to coordinate war propaganda operations against Americans who do not back all-out war against Russia. Since her return to the U.S., Loomer has been focusing her fire against anti-war voices from within the Republican Party and MAGA movement, denouncing them as “Russian assets.”
The Ukrainian government protests that it did not invite Loomer to Ukraine, and found out about her presence from “social media,” yet in her few days there, she was able to interview acting president Volodymir Zelensky and Andriy Biletsky, the avowed neo-Nazi and founder of the Azov Battalion who currently commands Ukraine’s 3rd Army.
The agenda of her meeting with the CCD—an agency of Zelensky’s National Security and Defense Council—included a discussion of “Russian disinformation and information influence campaigns, their adaptation to different audiences, as well as Ukraine’s experience in countering the Russian Federation’s sustained and coordinated operations,” the CCD reported. Kovalenko pressed the CCD’s long-standing demand: that governments “impose sanctions on individuals and entities involved in Russia’s influence operations.” The CCD has on other occasions demanded people who refuse to call for crushing Russia be treated as “information terrorists,” and dealt with as you would a terrorist.
