Russia Trolls The West

Come to our side – follow us on twitter on #StarWarsDay pic.twitter.com/zAuPQRFMi7

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) May 4, 2017

Johnny Simon, Quartz: The Russian embassy in London gleefully trolls the West on Twitter

Most countries might use their embassy’s social-media accounts to blandly promote their political and economic interests. Russia is not most countries.

A tweet from the official account of Moscow’s UK embassy on Thursday (May 4) aimed to get in on Star Wars fandom’s “May the Fourth.” It featured a Photoshopped image of Darth Vader taking a selfie, with the curt note “Come to our side–follow us on twitter on #StarWarsDay.” Now the Russians might not actually think of themselves as Earth’s representatives of the dark-side forces of the Galactic Empire. But Twitter was a fine place to troll those who traffic in such perceptions in the West.

At first glance, it’s a bit of a counterintuitive tone to strike on an official government account, especially one that is ostensibly staffed by diplomats. But from Russia’s documented troll armies to its reported meddling in the 2016 US election, the country’s approach to the internet has never been quite that, um, conventional.

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WNU Editor: We definitely saw this trolling when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was in Washington this Wednesday .... Live From the Oval Office, It's Sergei Lavrov! (Bloomberg). And lets face it .... the West .... especially the main stream media and it's political class .... are always falling for it. :)