On November 20, 2017, The Times reported that “almost 400,000 Twitter messages about Scottish independence were posted by fake accounts, most believed to be Russian.” Moreover, these accounts’ activity “coincided with major Scottish events,” including the proposed second Scottish independence referendum. Of the nearly 400,000 tweets, nearly all of them were pro-independence. On December 13, the Atlantic Council’s Ben Nimmo similarly reported that “pro-Russian internet trolls” that operated with behavior consistent with the Russian government-connected Internet Research Agency conducted a disinformation campaign after the Scottish referendum. Nimmo claimed that the trolls utilized Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accounts to claim that the election was manipulated. Nimmo stated that “‘the allegations of fraud demonstrably had an impact; pro-Kremlin accounts demonstrably boosted those allegations. The anger and disappointment felt by many yes voters were entirely sincere [and] those sentiments were fanned by pro-Kremlin trolls, in a manner characteristic of Russian influence operations.'”