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The North Atlantic Fellas Organisation, also known as NAFO, is a pro-NATO troll farm engaged in information warfare on social media (particularly Twitter) for the benefit of Ukraine.
History
NAFO, firstly known as Fellas, started appearing on Twitter in May 2022. User @Kama_Kamilia photoshopped the "cheems" meme in order to make it look like a Ukrainian soldier.
After some time, Kama_Kamilia started making custom "fellas" for other users if they donated to the Georgian legion, a paramilitary group that facilitated US soldiers entry into Ukraine to fight against Russia.
Since then, the "NAFO" has grown to a troll farm of its own and has even been mentioned and celebrated by Ukrainian politicians.
Arvamusfestival ties
In August 2022, the Arvamusfestival (Opinion Festival) was convened in Estonia. An English-language panel was hosted as well, in which UK Foreign Office veteran and psy-ops specialist Ross Burley spoke.[1]
The panel also compared the Lithuanian Elves, another pro-NATO troll farm created in 2014, with the NAFO trolls, praising both.
According to the Grayzone, while the Elves' official history is that they were a loose collection of concerned citizens wishing to fight against Russian propaganda and later picked up by Lithuania's Stratcom (shared NATO strategic command division), leaked documents from the Integrity Initiative, a covert Foreign Office information warfare operation staffed by military and intelligence veterans, paint a very different story: the Integrity Initiative files strongly suggest there is little meaningful distinction between Lithuania’s Stratcom unit and the Elves, and show the Initiative was funded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense to arrange monthly trips abroad for its Stratcom staff, so the psy-ops divisions of other NATO member state militaries could be taught in the “infowar techniques” practiced by the group.
Tactics
Their tactics are to parse Twitter for anything that has to do with anti-Ukraine or pro-Russia discourse, then flood the replies and harass the authors with pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine propaganda. They will signal each other with the #NAFO or #Fellas hashtags.
It is very likely that NAFO is comprised mostly of bots, considering most just send memes and never engage any other way.
Ukrainian politicians and state agencies, as well as Western media and government officials, have at various times celebrated, congratulated, praised and addressed the NAFO trolls directly, leading to the very plausible theory that they are a joint US-UA effort to wage information warfare on social media.
Official Ukrainian recognition
On August 28, 2022, @DefenceU, the official page of the Ministry of Defense in Ukraine, tweeted:
We usually express gratitude to our international partners for the security assistance. But today we want to give a shout-out to a unique entity - North Atlantic Fellas Organization #NAFO. Thanks for your fierce fight against kremlin’s propaganda &trolls. We salute you, fellas![2]
On September 4, 2022, Oleksii Reznikov (Ukraine's Minister of Defence) tweeted:
Thanks for inviting me to NAFO! Our joint work continues: #UAarmy fights for the future of Europe; #NAFO donates&destroys russo-propaganda. Let’s win together! Thx you to @saintjavelin for T-shirt&cap patch[3]
Accompanied by a picture of him wearing a Fella T-shirt and cap.
References
- ↑ Kit Klarenberg (2022-08-24). "Intelligence operative confirms British gov’t is targeting The Grayzone" The Grayzone. Archived from the original.
- ↑ @DefenceU, Defence of Ukraine (2022-08-28). Twitter. Archived from the original on 2022-09-16.
- ↑ @oleksiireznikov, Oleksii Reznikov (2022-09-04). Twitter. Archived from the original.