Kremlin bots tried to downplay the scale of the emergency in Tuapse and p...

Kremlin bots tried to downplay the scale of the emergency in Tuapse and praised Russian air defense

Over the past seven days, pro-government bots on VKontakte left more than five thousand comments under posts mentioning the consequences of Ukrainian drone attacks on the oil refinery in Tuapse. This is indicated by data from the Botnadzor project, analyzed by Verstka.

In the first days after the attacks, the bots stuck to the standard narratives used in comments about the war with Ukraine: they praised the “best air defense on the entire planet,” blamed the West, which had “a hand in the attacks,” and threatened that these “actions would not go unanswered.”

The bots also called the AFU attacks “terrorism” in many comments and expressed bewilderment over why Ukrainians were striking at “peaceful people.”

“It’s just a nightmare, these khokhols are simply inhuman, they attack mindlessly, and then our people suffer from oil spills, ужас!”, the messages say.

Later, the bots began working on the aftermath of the attacks: calming users down and downplaying the scale of the emergency.

“Firefighters in Tuapse have already put out everything that was burning, so the air will soon get cleaner and the black rains will stop falling,” bots were writing as early as April 24.

The bots also actively praised the work of the Emergency Situations Ministry, which “is doing everything possible to put out the fire faster,” and separately noted the involvement of the agency’s head, Alexander Kurenkov, who arrived at the fire site only the day before.

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