She spoke with a slight Russian accent, said she came from Luhansk, a region of Ukrainian Donbass, at the heart of the war with Russia. She professed her admiration for Vladimir Putin to the hundreds of thousands of followers of his various social media accounts. But Donbass Devushka - literally the daughter of Donbass in Russian - actually had nothing to do with Russia and spoke perfect English.
This thirty-year-old 100% "made in USA" who lives in the Washington area, in the United States, confirmed her name Sarah Bils, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sunday, April 16. The famous daily presents it as a key element in the dissemination of "Pentagon leaks" - the famous classified documents of the American intelligence services - on Russian social networks.
Interviews with the best of pro-Russian bloggers
As early as April 5, some of these documents began circulating on the Donbass Devushka Telegram channel where "they were spotted by several Russian-speaking accounts," notes the Wall Street Journal.
Sarah Bils claimed that another moderator of her Telegram channel had broadcast this information. Because "the girl from Donbass" is not alone in playing into the hands of pro-Russian propaganda on her social networks. Since 2021, this former military has built a "small empire of pro-Russian disinformation", which would occupy about fifteen people from its North American suburbs, says Nafo, a group of pro-Ukrainian activists, who were the first to discover the true identity of Donbass Devushka.
Since the beginning of the war in February 2022, Sarah Bils has multiplied accounts on Twitter to promote messages likening the Ukrainian government to a collection of Nazis or circulating pro-Moscow "analyses" that minimize the setbacks of the Russian army in Ukraine. But her accounts were closed one after the other, leaving only the first, @PeImeniPusha she created on Twitter in 2012 and which is followed by just over 60,000 followers.
That's better than his YouTube channel, which only has just over 3,000 subscribers. She continues to regularly post long interviews with all the top bloggers and self-proclaimed pro-Russian independent journalists in the English-speaking world. Figures such as Jackson Hinkle and Eva Bartlett, who are among the top 10 non-Russian "influencers" to support Moscow, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, discuss the "inevitable decline of the West" or how the United States is using Ukraine to attack Russia.
On Telegram, Sarah Bils does not hesitate to share more violent content with her community, 65,000 strong. Messages celebrate the killing of Ukrainian soldiers and defend the ultra-violent methods of the Wagner mercenary group.
"This pro-Russian English-speaking disinformation network repeats all the language used by Moscow. There are accusations of Nazism against the Ukrainian government as well as the claim that Russia is besieged by a declining West," said Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a specialist in Russian disinformation and propaganda mechanisms at the University of Copenhagen.
Fish food or pro-Putin merchandise?
Sarah Bils seems to have become Moscow's propaganda master. However, his career did not suggest anything of such a professional specialty. Despite her claims, the one who posed as Donbass Devushka has never set foot in Russia and even less in the Donbass.
Information gathered by activists from the Nafo collective indicates that Sarah Bils joined the army in 2009 to join the navy. She left active duty in November 2022, due to "post-traumatic stress disorder," she told the Wall Street Journal. Contacted by the newspaper, the army did not confirm the version of events put forward by the young woman.
In the meantime, she had set up a small business selling ... fish food. She has even participated in podcasts on this theme, which is far removed from Russophile considerations.
It was only with the beginning of the great offensive in February 2022 that Sarah Bils turned into a relentless supporter of the Russian cause. "She built up one of the fastest growing English-speaking pro-Putin communities," said Pekka Kallioniemi, a researcher at the University of Tampere in Finland and a member of the Nafo collective.
It is difficult to explain this professional retraining. But she is far from the only one to have chosen to become an influencer in the service of Moscow. "The vast majority of this English-speaking support for Russia comes from the United States or Europe," said Jeff Hawn, a Russia expert and outside consultant for the New Lines Institute, a U.S. geopolitical research center.
Opportunism
This is not, however, a sign of Vladimir Putin's growing popularity in the Western world, says this specialist. "In the United States, most of these Moscow backers promote Russia because it embodies the antithesis of an America they can't stand anymore," Hawn said.
There is probably also an element of opportunism. "It's a niche that can pay off big," notes Jeff Hawn. Sarah Bils had set up an online store - deactivated since this weekend - selling various items in support of the Russian war effort in Ukraine. You could find T-shirts or mugs glorifying Vladimir Putin, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov or Sergei Prigozhin, the boss of the Wagner group.
"Anglophone networks such as Donbass Devushka should not necessarily be seen as an effort to recruit Russian intelligence services to export its propaganda," Golovchenko said. On the other hand, whatever the motivations of these Putinophile "influencers", their actions "are very useful to the Kremlin", says this expert. For him, "the main weakness of Russian propaganda is that it always appears very institutional and linked to Russian power. With these relays in the English-speaking world, Moscow can boast of having popular support. What could be further away, a priori, from the corridors of the Kremlin than a former soldier converted into the sale of fish products in a small American town.
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