A supposedly UK-based network of Telegram channels is hoping to spark civil war in Britain – but the operation appears to be run from Russia.
HOPE not hate can reveal that a network of Telegram channels is offering cash to UK citizens willing to commit acts of terror and vandalism:
Read the story of the Telegram network aiming to bring war to Britain’s streets.
The past few weeks have witnessed a wave of vandalism targeting Islamic centres in London. At least seven mosques and Islamic schools in East and South London have been targeted with threatening graffiti, including the message “remigration or die” sprayed on the wall of an Islamic primary school in Leyton.
The vandalism appears to have been committed by the same individual, judging by the similar writing style, but this perpetrator did so at the behest of a newly-created Telegram channel which posted videos of the crime being carried out.
Acknowledging the crude efforts, the channel then attempted to entice more people to join the campaign by offering a payment of “100£ in any cryptocurrency” for the best effort:
HOPE not hate can reveal that these hate crimes are just the tip of an iceberg. The vandalism was coordinated by a network of Telegram channels set up in the months since the racist riots last summer. These channels present themselves as British, but in fact appear to be run from Russia.
At the end of August, just weeks after the riots had swept the country, unusual messages began to appear in British far-right chat groups, as newly created Telegram accounts shared a graphic that promised cash in exchange for violent attacks on British police.
The text hinted that the messages may not originate from a British source: the use of “2500£”, placing the currency symbol at the end of the number. This formula is common to many countries in Europe but absent in the English-speaking world.
When some members of the chat raised their suspicions that the posts were part of an entrapment operation by the police or intelligence services, the user reassured them that the group was not related to the security services, instead referring to themselves “another interested group”:
While it does not appear that anyone took the channel up on its cash offer and attacked a police car, this was just the beginning of the campaign. A network of new accounts, channels and chats were created over the months that followed, which together pumped out violent Islamophobic and anti-migrant content and increasingly pushed Britons to attack mosques, which it called the “infrastructure of the Caliphate”.
Most alarmingly, a chat group set up for “militant” supporters of the network is providing not just moral and financial support for terrorism, but practical support too. The chat hosts a vast library of terrorist training manuals in PDF format, with guides on how to produce explosives, grenades, landmines, carbombs, along with dozens of blueprints for producing firearms via 3D printers.
By 29 December, the main channel in the network posted the first evidence that UK residents were answering the call to action, showing posters placed around London that advertised the channel.
Those posting for the channel have always claimed to be British, but the language used and numerous errors in grammar suggest that the author does not have a firm grasp of English and is using an unreliable translation tool. Some sentences are so garbled that they lose the intended meaning:
However, it was a sloppy mistake in mid-January that gave the most significant clue as to the origin of the network. While sharing a screenshot from X/Twitter, the author apparently failed to realise that it revealed both that the Twitter account in question had its language set to Russian and, crucially, that the account was set to GMT+3, a timezone only used in Russia, Belarus and some nations in the Middle East and Africa.
The channel deleted the post shortly after, but it remained visible via forwarded versions in other chats.
However, the mistake appears not to have prompted any greater care on the part of the author/s, since another appeared just over a week later: the accidental inclusion of the letter в at the start of a paragraph, a character which appears only in the Cyrillic script. It seems unlikely that this character could have been accidentally included in the text unless the author had translated it from a Cyrillic-alphabet language or had that keyboard installed on their phone.
There are other clues linking the network to Russia. Two of the Telegram users most active in forwarding messages from the network to other British chat groups have also made Russian language posts in pro-Putin & anti-Ukraine Telegram chats.
One of these users had posted an anti-Ukraine message, using the slur “Хохла”, or “khokhol” to refer to Ukrainian people, on 19 November, but a few weeks later was attempting to pay someone in Sheffield or Rotherham to perform an unspecified task in exchange for payment:
“Hi guys, who is Rotherham or Sheffield, I need help, I’m ready to pay… I really need your help.”
The direction of the network, already alarming enough, was made clearer via an announcement in the chat on 8 February that a new group was “allied” to the original group. With its Russian origins much more evident, this new group has two main chats: one in Russian for the CIS, the Russia-led alliance of former-Soviet states, and the other posting in English for a European audience.
These newer channels are even more explicit in soliciting members to carry out acts of violence. They also post a non-stop stream of videos purporting to show its members murdering immigrants, committing arson attacks on family homes and testing explosive devices in remote locations.
In an early post on the Russian language channel, the channel explained its desire to “rid society” of minority groups and “inactive garbage”:
“This is an association of misanthropes that opposes the Jewish authorities, Muslims, drug addicts and inactive garbage in the form of people. We strive to rid society of individuals who are unworthy of being in it, so that our future and the future of our children will be bright.”
Telegram message 10 November 2024 (Translated from Russian via Google Translate)
At this stage, it is difficult to say with confidence exactly what this network – a labyrinth of channels, group chats and accounts – represents. On early examination, however, it appears to be a Russia-based influence operation that emerged in the aftermath of the UK riots and is attempting to rekindle the violence by any means available.
The determination to recruit British operatives to carry out violence against minority communities in the UK is deeply alarming. Its provision of terrorist-training manuals to users – possession of which carries a significant jail term in the UK – means it is essential that the network is shut down by Telegram and thoroughly investigated by the authorities.
HOPE not hate has provided all the evidence we have regarding this network to the authorities.
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