A Russian propaganda campaign involving thousands of fake accounts on TikTok spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine has been uncovered by the BBC.

Its videos routinely attract millions of views and have the apparent aim of undermining Western support.

Users in several European countries have been subjected to false claims that senior Ukrainian officials and their relatives bought luxury cars or villas abroad after Russia's invasion in February 2022.

The fake TikTok videos played a part in the dismissal last September of Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, according to his daughter Anastasiya Shteinhauz.

The BBC has uncovered nearly 800 fake accounts since July. TikTok says it was already investigating the issue and says it has taken down more than 12,000 fake accounts originating in Russia.

'Villa in Madrid'

Ms Shteinhauz told the BBC she found out about the Russian disinformation campaign when she received a surprising call from her husband while on holiday.

"OK, so now you've got a villa in Madrid," he told her, before sending a link to a TikTok video narrated by an AI-generated voice that claimed she had bought a home in the Spanish capital.

Ms Shteinhauz initially dismissed the video as a one-off, but the following morning she was sent a similar TikTok clip alleging she had bought a villa on the French Riviera. The videos had been circulating among her friends before finally reaching her husband.

Videos on TikTok falsely accused Mr Reznikov and his daughter of buying luxury cars or property in Europe during the Ukraine war

Ms Shteinhauz says she does not own property in Spain or France or "anywhere else outside Ukraine".

BBC Verify also traced the pictures of the houses in Madrid and Cannes to two local property websites and they were both still for sale.

Other videos directly targeted her father.

Co-ordinated effort

The videos sent to Ms Shteinhauz belong to a vast Russia-based network of fake TikTok accounts posing as real users from Germany, France, Poland, Israel and Ukraine.

Using a combination of hashtag searches and TikTok's own recommendations, BBC Verify was able to trace hundreds of similar videos targeting dozens of Ukrainian officials.

The accounts that posted them used stolen profile pictures, including those of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Colin Farrell.

With only a handful of exceptions, they posted just one video each - a tactic TikTok says is new and aimed at evading detection and manipulating the platform's system for recommending videos to users.