#NoTwitterGulagForDarthPutinKGB

This week saw some of the most popular Twitter accounts satirizing the official pro-Kremlin narrative suspended:

@SovietSergey, which targets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; @AmbYakovenkoNot, which lampoons Aleksandr Yakovenko, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, @RusEmbassyNot, a parody of Yakovenko’s embassy, and @Russia__Not account, which spoofs the Russian government.

“Another salvo in a grinding information campaign”
Consternation was created by the suspension of @DarthPutinKGB, a popular account mocking the President of the Russian Federation with tweets like “Soviet Russian counterterrorism operation kills 146% of the suspects”. This step resulted in dozens of angry tweets, including from Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (below).

The issue was covered by media including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Politico, Buzzfeed and yesterday, the Financial Times, which commented: “For Europe’s increasingly anxious defence and security establishment the episode is another salvo in a grinding information campaign of finger-pointing and mud-stirring that Moscow is waging in Europe.”

Twitter did not publicly state the reasoning behind the suspension and only quoted its rules for parody accounts – which most of the suspended accounts complied with.

Accounts reopened
Given that other parody accounts like @Queen_Europe, tweaking Angela Merkel, remained untouched, there is a speculation that the suspension was linked to the outrage Mr Lavrov’s spokeswoman shared when Euronews quoted Sergey Lavrov’s parody account in a news story, taking it for a genuine expression by the Russian Foreign Minister. Such errors do happen: This week, StopFake pointed out that Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted a fake account for Nadiya Savchenko.

Finally, a campaign with the hashtag #NoTwitterGulagForDarthPutinKGB was created in response to the suspension and late on Wednesday, the accounts were enabled again.