NewsGuard, an American project to verify the accuracy and transparency of news sites, on December 1st published a search on TikTok and the hundreds of videos celebrating the Wagner group, made up of mercenaries known to have carried out interventions in several countries in recent years, in the service of the Russian government. NewsGuard says the videos, with very violent content, do not comply with the rules of the platform, but they are there and have been viewed more than a billion times.
The Wagner Group is a private security company made up mostly of Russian ex-military, ex-policemen and ex-security agents. It has existed for about ten years: formally it is a private group of mercenaries, but in fact it has always been rather close to President Vladimir Putin, who has used it on several occasions as an instrument of his military tactics, with operations in various countries where had an interest in intervening, including Libya, Syria, Mali and the Central African Republic.
Wagner is considered one of the most efficient mercenary groups in the world. He has a pro-Nazi ideology and has been accused by various international organizations of carrying out war crimes and torture. He has been present in Ukraine since at least 2014, the year of the invasion and annexation of the Crimea peninsula by Russia. Formally, the group is prohibited by law from operating in Russia, as are all other organizations that recruit and train mercenaries: this is one of the reasons why the Russian government has always denied having links with them. Recently, however, things seem to have changed. A series of episodes made it clear how in the war in Ukraine the Wagner group became an integral part of the Russian forces, if not even an essential component of it.
NewsGuard identified 160 TikTok videos that “show, celebrate or reference acts of violence committed by the Wagner group.” Fourteen of these videos appear to show all or part of the execution of former Russian mercenary Yevgeny Nuzhin, which took place in October 2022. Nuzhin said he was recruited by the group while in prison in Russia, but he later decided to defect and fight for Ukraine. The leader of the Wagner group he defined the video of the execution is an “excellent job of directing”, but he denied that he was involved in the execution.
While NewsGuard did its analysis, TikTok removed ten of these videos, likely for violating its guidelines. However, one had been viewed at least 900,000 times before TikTok removed it.
NewsGuard then identified more than 500 music videos which, it says, “although they do not include violent content, do incite violence against Ukrainians.” And even these 500 videos “seem to violate TikTok guidelines” which prohibit content that “praises, promotes, glorifies or expresses support for violent acts” and videos that “attack, threaten, incite violence or dehumanize an individual or a group”.
The researchers finally found, also on TikTok, five accounts that direct users to sites where Wagner regularly posts recruitment announcements. And they identified ten hashtags directly related to the Wagner group, which were then used in hundreds of videos, most of which promote the group. NewsGuard explains that “videos featuring the top three hashtags associated with the Russian-language Wagner group have collectively been viewed well over a billion times.”
Responding via email to a request for comment from NewsGuard, TikTok did not dispute the results of this analysis, but did know that on their platform “there is no space for violent or hateful content” and that they will take action “on content violating these rules”.
