Tweets posted under the name @DavidJo52951945 were likely to have been posted as part of a disinformation campaign

Hundreds of thousands of Twitter users are reading pro-Kremlin propaganda by a suspected Russian troll posing as a Ukip supporter, evidence suggests.

Analysis of tweets under the name @DavidJo52951945 indicates that they were likely to have been posted as part of a disinformation campaign.

The account has built up a following of more than 100,000 people, including prominent British rightwingers, and has been retweeted by Ukip officials with thousands more followers. Since 2013 it has disseminated 130,000 tweets featuring anti-EU, anti-migration and pro-Brexit comments and news links.

A statistical analysis of recent tweets suggests they were almost all posted between 5am and 5pm UK time, which is 8am to 8pm in Russia. Employees at a notorious “troll factory” in St Petersburg are known to work