Ukraine war: The stolen faces used to promote Vladimir Putin

Indian influencer ER Yamini has never tweeted in her life - she prefers to cultivate her big fan bases on Instagram and YouTube.

But in early March, a Twitter account using her picture tweeted: "#IStandWithPutin. True Friendship" accompanied by a video showing two men hugging - one representing India, the other, Russia.

Yamini says she doesn't support either country in the Russia-Ukraine war, and worries about her fans.

"If they see that tweet, what will they think about me?" she asks, "I wish they wouldn't use my photo on that profile."

The fake account is part of a network promoting Russian president Vladimir Putin on Twitter, which used the hashtags #IStandWithPutin and #IStandWithRussia on 2 and 3 March. This led to trending topics in different regions - particularly in the global south, apparently showing support for the war, in countries including India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria.

Part of the activity tracked was organic - in other words, produced by real people - reflecting genuine support in some countries for Mr Putin and Russia.

But many other profiles appear to have been inauthentic. They retweeted messages in high quantities, produced few original messages, and were created very recently.

"They were likely produced by bots, fake profiles or compromised accounts, artificially amplifying support for Putin in these countries," says Carl Miller, co-founder of CASM Technology, a company that researches online harms and disinformation.

It tracked 9,907 profiles promoting support for Russia on 2 and 3 March, in several different languages. CASM found more than 1,000 of those accounts had spam-like characteristics.

The BBC investigated hundreds of these seemingly inauthentic profiles. Our research confirms Mr Miller's thinking - they try to pass as genuine, but in fact are fake.

Through reverse image searching, we have found that pictures used by these profiles were copied from celebrities, influencers and ordinary users, who had no idea their images were being used to support Russia in its war against Ukraine.

We have not been able to determine who set up the accounts, or whether they have any connection to the Russian government.

An account named Preety Sharma, for example, states in its bio that they are a "model and entrepreneur" originally from India, now in Miami. It was created on 26 February, two days after Russia's invasion. "Putin is a good person", says one of its retweets.

But the woman depicted in the account's profile picture is in the other side of the world. Nicole Thorne is an Australian social media influencer who has 1.5 million followers on Instagram, and only occasionally uses her original profile on Twitter.