Kiyv: A senior official revealed to independent journalist Lee Fang earlier this week at the RSA Convention in San Francisco that Ukrainian intelligence has collaborated with the FBI and other US government agencies to remove "Russian" content from Silicon Valley platforms.

According to Ilya Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), "Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the US, we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook."

In addition to Assistant Director of the FBI's Cyber Division Bryan Vorndran, Special Agent Alex Kobzanets from the San Francisco field office, and Laura Galante from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Vitiuk spoke at the cyber security conference.

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Several "private sector allies" in the US, such as Google, Amazon, Starlink, and CrowdStrike—the DNC contractor who claimed "Russian hacking" in 2016 but later testified it had no proof—were thanked by the Ukrainian official, according to Fang.

While speaking on the panel, Kobzanets said, "I don't know how many times we've called the CEOs here in San Francisco to drive to their office on a Sunday afternoon and really engage with our Ukrainian partners.

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Vitiuk claims that in order to have someone or something censored, the SBU informs the FBI that it "probably" has "Russia's influence" on that person or that account. He referred to the FBI as his organization's "top partner" and the US cyber support for Ukraine as a "psychological game changer."

When Fang questioned Vitiuk about how the SBU determines what may be false information, Vitiuk responded, "Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it's not." "Now is the time to have that kind of understanding, not to be deceived, for our victory."

Vitiuk cited, as an illustration, reports of conflict between President Vladimir Zelensky and Ukraine's top general, Valery Zaluzhny, and claimed that these reports were entirely made up by Russia. Their divergent views on military strategy were covered by the openly pro-Ukrainian German tabloid Bild in early March.

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Previously, Fang has reported on US government plans to collaborate with social media companies to censor "disinformation" about "the nature of US support to Ukraine." He also disclosed in December that Twitter and the Pentagon had collaborated to "amplify certain messages" for the US military.