I'm pretty convinced that Livejournal was Russia's test bed for weaponizing social media. I think they used it against their own citizens first, and data-mined the English-speaking side to understand how it worked, and took what they learned to perfect the shit-storm of lies on modern social media (on Tumblr/Twitter/Reddit/everywhere.)
The more I analyse the news and what is happening in the world as a whole .... I don't think nations matter any more. It doesn't matter if you say it's Russian, Ukrainian, American, German, Chinese or even Canadian ..... the power and influence is controlled by corporations and many of them have way more power and wealth than the smallest nations. They exert so much power that they influence (at least) or control (at most) every nation in the world.
They're so wealthy and powerful that they can bend, break or manipulate any and all laws of any nation that stand in their way.
It's not a conspiracy at this point ... it's just an observation.