Emma Briant Shills for the Azov Brigade in Ukraine

Part 2: Chickens Come Home To Roost

Emma Briant's journey from an apparently left-wing critic of propaganda to participant in propaganda networks of Western security establishment was so far-reaching that she ended up as an active participant in a bona fide British intelligence network convened by Andy Pryce, a career MI6 officer, and his ‘agent’, the ‘left-wing’ journalist Paul Mason.

In Part 2 of this investigation, we look at how her seemingly innocent interest in researching state propaganda activities very quickly morphed into active participation in Western propaganda networks. Part 1 delved deep into her career.

Atlantic Council Conference, June 2021

Among the speakers for a four-day Atlantic Council event at which Briant spoke in June 2021, were scores of Atlantic Council speakers from their Digital Forensic Research (DFR) Lab, joined by assorted senior executives at social media companies, including Meta and its subsidiary Facebook, Wikimedia, and others. They included Ben Nimmo, formerly of the Atlantic Council and sometime Integrity Initiative contractor, the military intelligence/MI6 project funded by the British Foreign Office to counter Russian disinformation. Nimmo is now the grandly titled Global Influence Operations Threat Intelligence Lead at Facebook/Meta. Briant also (virtually) rubbed shoulders with Nina Jancowicz, later the briefly tenured head of the Disinformation Governance board at the Department of Homeland Security.

Briant’s own panel was called “Disinfo for hire” with an academic, a journalist, and the ubiquitous DFR Lab staffer as the panel chair. The final panellist was a colleague of Nimmo’s, David Agranovich, Director of Global Threat Disruption at Facebook. Agranovich is a former US Government intelligence operative, part of an increasing pattern of Western intelligence staff being recruited at higher levels of social media giants.

Leaked emails show that Briant reached out to Agranovich in 2022 to enlist his aid in regaining a lost Facebook profile for a Nazi-washing Ukrainian nationalist propaganda vehicle. The emails between Briant, the journalist Paul Mason, and his MI6 handler Andy Pryce show Briant working behind the scenes to improve the visibility of a Nazi-washing propaganda outlet.

Lobbying Facebook To Allow Nazi-washing 

Evidence that Briant was deeply involved with Mason and was copied into correspondence with Andy Pryce, Mason’s ‘handler’, is compounded by an intervention she made on behalf of a Ukrainian nationalist grouping, EuroMaidan PR, on 14 April 2022. She forwarded details of this to Mason with the following message:

This below is FYI ... I can introduce you to the campaign … to the best of my knowledge FB still haven’t explained or reinstated their ability to advertise. All while Russian accounts seem to get reinstated almost immediately. It might be that Russia is better at engaging crowds of people to inundate the platforms with requests to take down Ukrainian and complaints of censorship aimed to reinstate their own accounts? It’s likely not a deliberate policy of the platforms to favour Russia but it seems Russia is the one trying to complain that it’s subject to censorship, which may make the platforms nervous.

The paranoia in this message is palpable. This is in a context where Russian Government-funded media such as RT and Sputnik are banned and closed down in multiple countries. By contrast, EuromaidanPR was not shut down. Someone at EuromaidanPR had written to Briant as follows:

My team in Ukraine runs EuromaidanPR, a large independent news service with a very strong social media presence. Two days ago, Facebook suddenly prohibited us from boosting any FB posts as we have been doing all along. You can see below that none of the posts we tried to boost should have been rejected, but FB is now prohibiting us from boosting any posts.  This was likely caused by Russian trolls constantly complaining about our truthtelling. Just last week, the Washington Post lauded our work yet now FB is trying to curtail it.

On 13 April, Briant sent an email to lobby Facebook on behalf of the Nazi-washing venture. Who did she turn to? The Facebook executive she had been on the panel with at the Atlantic Council event some 10 months earlier.

Dear David,

I hope my message finds you well. I know you understand how urgent it is for Ukrainian voices to be heard the amid war crimes and human rights abuses taking place in Ukraine ... I am therefore writing to raise an issue to your urgent attention please. 

The EuromaidanPR campaign raises Ukrainian voices and engages in advocacy from a Ukrainian perspective, playing a significant enough role in the grassroots effort to be mentioned in the Washington Post this week. In the same week, Meta stopped their advertising giving no explanation besides a general statement about 'inauthentic behavior or violations of our Advertising Policies of Community Standards'. 

I have taken a look at Meta's communication to them and the content they were pushing and other posts to their account and nothing seems likely to have obviously violated any of your policies as far as I can see. 

As I am sure you know, EuromaidanPR and other Ukrainian campaigns receive a lot of trolls and Russian reporting trying to get them banned, which I assume may have happened in this case. Given the urgency of the situation in Ukraine I am therefore writing to ask you please to reinstate the ability to boost the Ukrainian voices or at least please provide them with a proper explanation if they did do something wrong, so they can alter their strategy for future content.

Thank you ever so much in advance for your time in considering this request, I do hope you can help them and understand the need for a swift reinstatement of their ability to raise their voices in the midst of what looks like a genocide.

If there is a genocide happening in ‘Ukraine’ it is of Russian speakers  - which numerous accounts verify have been targetted for some considerable years by the Nazis’ and Ukrainian nationalists in charge in Kiev.

Agranovich replied the same day: “Hello Emma! Thanks for flagging this. I’ll get it to our Ukraine team ASAP. They should be able to verify the reason and revert if it was inaccurate”.

EuromaidanPR: ‘Independent News Service’ or Nazi-washing Western Propaganda?

EuromaidanPR, Euromaidan Press, or EMPR, describes itself as:

#1 independent citizen media about Ukraine from a point of view of ordinary Ukrainian citizens ... giving analysis and reporting the TRUTH for the rest of the world. Our reporters are ordinary people. EMPR is entirely independent, reliant on our volunteers and we reject any owner or large donor who may affect our independence.

In fact, Euromaidan has published scores of false stories on the developing situation, being especially belligerent in promoting the false story that the pre-coup Ukrainian government was responsible for the shooting deaths of the Maidan protestors and in Nazi-washing the Azov battalion/regiment and other Nazi formations in Ukraine. In one report, it rebutted the claims — now known to be factual — that snipers associated with the far right/Maidan injured or killed almost every protestor. In a handy guide called “What is Azov Regiment? Honest answers to the most common questions”, the glib conclusion is: “the short answer to the question about ‘Azov Nazis’ is: ‘no, Azov is not a neo-Nazi regiment’”. In May 2022, EMPR referred to “cheesy Russian propaganda on Azov as neo-Nazi”.

EuromaidanPR is funded by the International Renaissance Foundation — part of the Soros regime change empire.  In 2020, Briant received $25,000 from the Open Society Foundations (also part of the Soros empire) towards a fellowship at Bard College in upstate New York. Soros was also a possible go-to source of funding discussed by Mason and Briant for their disinformation network.

I should note that I have also been in receipt of money from the Open Society Foundations to study the Islamophobic Counter-Jihad network and to examine the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network, a venture which turned out to be infiltrated by Zionist actors as well as to be covertly influenced by British intelligence.

The claim that Euromaidan reporters are ordinary people does not survive a quick search on its website where one can find many puff pieces written by the following agencies: Radio Liberty (14 items), Radio Svoboda (75) (or Radiosvoboda (62)), Radio Free Europe (15), Voice of America (17) (or RFE/RL (6)). All of these outlets are directly US Government-funded state propaganda outposts, and have nothing to do with ‘citizen journalism’. 

In addition, EMPR advertises several ‘partners’ on its website, including the anonymous-sounding International Media Solutions. This is a Washington, DC-based company which states it has “a particular focus on new media development in conflict and post-conflict countries”. Among its activities in Ukraine are an ‘anti corruption speaking club’ in Kherson and workshops on ‘social media best practice’ in Kiev, led by Kate Head of the US National Democratic Institute. Both initiatives are funded by USAID, and are thus revealed as US propaganda outputs.

Another partner is Mir & Co, a non-profit organization founded in August 2014 and funded by the Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation — which also funds EMPR. Mir & Co states that it delivers “various supplies” to the war zone in Eastern Ukraine, including “ammunition … and equipment for [the] Ukrainian military”. This kind of activity does not seem consistent with “citizen journalism”.

In other words, EMPR is neither citizen journalism nor independent. It would appear to be almost entirely a US Government-sponsored operation. It is not surprising it would be defended by Emma Briant with her multiple NATO, US, and UK contacts in propaganda and intelligence.

Conclusions

As The Grayzone reported, Mason and Briant discussed the Soros Open Society Foundations as a possible funding source for the ‘cut out’ which Mason was planning with his handler, the MI6 officer Andy Pryce. Briant passed the above email chain on all this to Mason, asking, in the message cited above, to “leave me out of any story on this please”. 

I have seen a number of emails between Tatham and Briant in the period 2015-2018. This is the period where Briant went from colleague to sceptic on Tatham as his role in SCL became questionable as the CA ‘scandal’ built. These emails were passed to me by Briant herself, usually with an indication that the contents should not be linked to her. In reviewing these, it is apparent that there is nothing of note in them that was not a matter of public record, though it may have been the object to cultivate the recipient.

This possible motive would help to explain how Briant privately claimed to be supportive of my case when I was under attack by the Zionist movement, but was unwilling to publicly support me. For example, according to her PhD supervisor, Professor Greg Philo, who messaged me in 2022, that in conversation with him, Briant “actually defends you”. However, she “sees you as being always negative about her and as she is generally paranoid it’s not a good combination”.

Of course, this lack of willingness to support publicly is also consistent with the subsequent ad hominem response to the earlier article I co-authored with Kit Klarenberg.

Briant’s odd mixture of self-promotion with a desire to be ‘left out of the story’ provides a cautionary tale for academics who want to be influential. Sooner or later, the world may hear of what you were actually doing.

Coda: Reaction to exposure

When the emails first surfaced, Briant attempted on 7 June 2022 to claim that the emails had been hacked. If anyone “does decide to publish my hacked private information”, she wrote, “they will hear from my lawyers”. Four days later, Briant claimed that the hack had been confirmed by Twitter. It hadn’t.

At first, Briant posed as outraged that she was being traduced, though she did not attempt to rebut any fact or any specific charge in the reporting. “The idea that I am advising on a secret plot to silence the UK left”, she wrote, “while simultaneously working my ass off on public statements to parliament about attacks on speech and declining government transparency … needs a special kind of deranged mind to reconcile”. As we have seen, her ‘critique’ of Cambridge Analytica was all of a piece with the MI6 line that the issue was about Russian interference, and not the actual import of what was happening, which was about intelligence-led disinformation about Russia.

Later, when we reported further details of her involvement in what in fact were secret plots, Briant resorted to ad hominem slurs and claims of “fantasy”, which, of course, were not substantiated.

The next strategy was to lean into the charges and pretend that she found them comedic — posting a mocked-up Twitter banner of herself as James Bond, an “international woman of mystery”, with the comedy spy Austin Powers as her profile picture, and a line that she is “not MI6 btw GZ”. This cover image and text were live for less than twelve hours, according to holdings in the Internet Archive. It was posted some time after 10:32 in the morning of 22 June 2022 and was deleted by 21:58 in the evening. It can be seen at 15.07 here. Perhaps she felt that this kind of approach might defuse the story. Shortly after this, Briant deleted her profile on Twitter (now X).

Learning Lessons?

But perhaps, dear reader, you have concluded that whatever mistakes Dr Briant might have made, she must surely be chastened by her exposure as a small cog in various intelligence-related machines? Without wishing to present the following as a thorough analysis of all her activities in the last three years, I submit that they indicate greater continuity with her past than discontinuity.

From December 2023, Briant has written three articles for Index on Censorship while under the control of genocidal Zionist Ruth Smeeth and former Jewish Chronicle hack Martin Bright. Index on Censorship has, since its inception, been close to the national security apparatus of the United States, and Bright has even admitted this in print endorsing the view that the CIA were playing “a sophisticated game” in routing payments to the magazine via the Ford Foundation. Index continues to get funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, the so-called CIA sidekick, though Bright has not been so upfront about what that means for its relations with the CIA.

Perhaps even more extraordinary is Briant’s involvement in editing a book which showcases a chapter by one of three Ukrainian sisters known to be Nazi sympathisers. The Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry was edited by Briant and collaborator Vian Bakir. The Ukrainian author is Alexandra Chalupa. Her chapter is titled ‘The Kremlin’s Influence Industry and its Use of Lawfare to Undermine Democracy’.

Alexandra was co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC’s) Ethnic Council, and her fingerprints are all over the disinformation that the Russians hacked and leaked the Clinton and Podesta emails — a core claim of the Russiagate deception. In 2015, according to her own account, Andrea was close to Michael Weiss of the Atlantic Council and various other NATO propaganda operations, such as The Interpreter Magazine. The connection of all three to Banderite propaganda networks and of Irena and Andrea to the Atlantic Council is illuminating, given the role that it appears the Atlantic Council played in a further Ukraine related propaganda operation.

All three sisters (the other two are Irena and Andrea) are — so it is reported — devotees of 1939-45 war-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and his OUN-B fascist militia. Irena works for the US state propaganda outfit Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was also (around 2015) a non-resident fellow at the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council. In 2016, she regularly posted debunking posts on StopFake. According to Ukrainian nationalist sources, Andrea and Alexandra were founders of a propaganda outlet Digital Maidan, created in New York in January 2014, which agitated for the coup in Ukraine. Their “closest working partners” included EuroMaidan Press, which was founded by Banderite thugs, and, as we have seen above, regularly publishes pieces by a wide range of official US propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

So, even after all this time, Briant is still associating with individuals who, at best, are deeply involved in Atlanticist state propaganda networks, and, at worst, in Nazi-affiliated networks.

Where is Emma Briant now?

Despite these connections, it would appear that Briant has not managed to either find herself a permanent job or to finish the work that she started on Cambridge Analytica back in 2018.

Since her work on Cambridge Analytica in 2018, Briant’s Senior Lecturer position at Essex, which lasted only one year and eight months, came to an end in March 2019. Since then, she has listed a series of part-time or honorary posts as follows:

• Part-time Fellow, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, October 2022-June 2025
• Honorary Fellow, Central European University, Vienna, April 2022-January 2023
• Honorary Associate, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge, March 2022- present
• Part-time Adjunct Professor, American University, Washington, DC, April-December 2021
• Visiting Researcher/Honorary Fellow, Bard College, New York, July 2019-June 2025
• Scholar in Residence, American University, Washington, DC, April-August 2019
• Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, July-September 2018
• Visiting Researcher, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, March 2018-May 2019
• Visiting Scholar, George Washington University, Washington, DC, March-July 2018
• Researcher/Post-Doc, George Washington University, Washington, DC, August 2016-April 2019

She appears not to have had a full-time academic job, except for a post in Australia: “In June 2023, Dr Briant moved to Melbourne, Australia to take up a new position as Associate Professor of News and Political Communication, at Monash University in the School of Media, Film and Journalism”. According to her LinkedIn page, this post lasted only one year and seven months. Her most recent post is stated to be a “visiting” role since February 2025 at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, though she states that this is “full-time”.

It would seem that she has had a series of “visiting” and “honorary” appointments, which in general, would not attract a salary, and several “adjunct” appointments, which are usually specific contracts for teaching and are not highly paid. So, how does Briant keep body and soul together? Well it appears that her “visiting/honorary” position at Bard College (2019 to the present) in upstate New York, was supported by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and she is also featured on the website of Chertwell Speakers where she offers her services for, according to her own website, “Speaking Fees: $10,000 – $25,000 USD”. Though, as one academic with knowledge of her career notes, “she makes a useful tool for intelligence and intelligence-linked academics and this might also help her shift from job to job”.

In 2019, she claimed to have already “spent 11 years researching SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica”. Given Cambridge Analytica was only created in 2013, this seems an inflated claim. As early as June 2019, she began mentioning her next book: “She is now consolidating recent research … into a long-term book project tentatively titled Propaganda Machine: The Hidden Story of Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry”. Also in 2019, she said the book was “expected” in 2020. She announced pre-orders for the title “from Amazon or Barnes and Noble” in September 2019. She created a website for the book in 2020. It was listed as already published on Google Books in 2020. It was, according to Amazon UK, due for publication on 4 January 2022. In May 2023, she said, “She is “now finalizing her third book, Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry”. Her own website still heralds it as a “forthcoming book project”. It appears not to be published as of December 2025.

In the end, the nature of the cautionary tale is that academics and journalists should pay much more attention to the potential that they might be co-opted and turned into assets of Western intelligence agencies than is exhibited in the cautionary tale that is Emma Briant.