RUSSIA’S meddling in Scottish political affairs was “discovered by accident”, sources close to the US investigation revealed last night.
The disclosure follows a warning by US Senator Angus King on Thursday that Vladimir Putin was actively pursuing a disinformation campaign to spark a second independence referendum.
One claim has even likened England to Russian occupiers of Donbass, in eastern Ukraine.
While the scale of activity in Scotland is not yet known, it is being seen as a resumption of activities carried out by Russia in the months leading to the referendum of 2014.
“They’ve set up shop in Scotland which is talking about an independence vote from Great Britain,” Senator King told a congressional committee hearing in Washington.
Last night experts warned that Moscow is directly and indirectly responsible for tens of thousands of bogus social media accounts aimed at “exacerbating divisions to destabilise Western economies”.
Vladimir Putin’s nefarious influence campaigns - his second most important foreign policy strategy after defence spending - are already known to have targeted the US, France, Germany and, most recently, Catalonia, over the last twelve months alone.
However the recent activities in Scotland were only uncovered by analysts poring over social media patterns in Spain for commercial reasons.
A leading cyber expert, whose forensic research has been fed to US investigators, told of his surprise when his team stumbled upon evidence of Russian manipulation.
“It was by complete accident - we’re not a propaganda discovery company, we’re a marketing intelligence company,” said the analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We use very sophisticated technologies and we were examining a totally separate issue in Spain, looking for patterns and connections between accounts, when we discovered several very interesting accounts that linked Catalonia independence with a push for a second Scottish referendum.
“These are accounts behaving in a manipulative manner, and we now know they are Russian-based. To all intents and purposes they’re Russian troops in the field.”
He added: “It’s not just about the left or the right. We’ve noticed accounts that show German left wingers or right wingers expressing unusual concerns in disparate issues in Italy, for instance.
“In the US they’ve supported both the Black Lives Matter movement and Donald Trump.”
Moscow is known to control the St Petersburg based Internet Research Agency where 300 people are paid to write 100 comments a day each in Russian, English and Ukrainian resulting in 30,000 daily postings daily.
But the scale of the problem is much wider.
“Facebook, Twitter and Google have vastly understated the degree of Russian disinformation on social media,” said Michael Carpenter, former US deputy assistant secretary of defence.
“They’re citing accounts that are tied to the troll farm in St Petersburg but Russia has created tens of thousands of other networks. They’re subcontracted via the dark web, and they pay any teenager to retweet or post messages about a particular topic
“They predictably spout secessionist rhetoric, they're in favour of Basque territory leaving France, Catalonia seceding from Spain, they support Lega Norde in Italy and Scottish cessation.
“I’ve seen Tweets where they compare Scotland to the Donbass region of Ukraine which is occupied by Russia.”
Putin’s campaign is borne of insecurity at home, according to former US ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow,
“He needs to diminish the appeal of Western ideals which he sees as a magnet for the younger generation,” he said.
“This is a serious problem. It’s a direct threat to the central pillar of democratic society.
“Russia sees divisions and puts salt in the wounds. For a country that styles itself as a superpower, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and supposedly bore the brunt of defeating fascism in the Second World War, to be promoting neo-Nazi views is disgusting.”
While social media platforms must do more to fight the threat Mr Vershbow, also a former deputy Secretary General to Nato, said education was key.
He said: “Kids at a young age must be taught to be much more savvy and sceptical about social media news. Do they know who posted a story they might want to retweet?
“Established newspapers and some of the newer internet platforms care about their reputations and operate within codes of practise. Young readers must be taught to value this and not just look at whats most entertaining.”
Earlier this year it emerged that Russia had targeted Scottish unionists ahead of the referendum - two years before allegedly interfering with the US presidential campaign.
Methods included the posting of 210 “fake news“ stories by Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti and a surge of Russian naval and air force activity that allowed the SNP to present Britain’s military defences as weakened.