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Late on the evening of April 9, Bristol Live received an unusual email.

The author of the 134-word message, intended for the letters page of our Bristol Post newspaper, wrote in positive terms about Brexit. They identified themselves as a Russian woman called Veronika Oleksychenko, claiming they had moved to Bristol in 2014.

The letter was vague in the way it championed Brexit. Left with unanswered questions, we decided to find out the story behind it.

We soon discovered ‘Veronika’ had not only signed off with a fake address, but managed to get near-identical letters published in at least eight other regional newspapers around England, each time presenting as a resident of the local area.

Over the last few weeks Veronika has refused to speak with us in person, but ‘she’ has sent long answers to our questions by email.

She has enthused about environmental benefits of Brexit, compared UKIP to Joseph Stalin and discussed her self-published novel, which depicts a riot-plagued Britain where ‘Nick Clogg’ is immortalised with a statue outside Parliament.

We have spoken to an expert on fake news who believes Veronika’s messages point to a fake persona, pointing out shared themes with Russian attempts at disinformation.

Here are the full details of what happened when we investigated.

Who is Veronika?

It all started at 9.03pm on April 9, when the following email dropped into our inbox:

Dear [Bristol Live digital editor Sian David],

I moved to the UK in 2014, from Russia, and I soon settled in Bristol. I think it is a great city to live in.

I don't know about anyone else but for me, I think Brexit has had the strangest effect of making me much more inspired and creative.

I suppose it's been a mix of my new life in this part of the world and then the whole Brexit thing happening.

Not only do I read a lot more now, but I also started writing. I attended a local evening class for creative writing.

And I have actually now published a novel, in English, with a big political aspect to the story. It's set in 2030, after the many effects of the current political situation.

So Brexit works in mysterious ways perhaps!

Best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Ms Veronika Oleksychenko

104A Eastgate Road

Bristol

BS5 6XX

Our first step in looking into the message was an Internet search.

There is no one by the name of Oleksychenko on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Until this year the name had never been mentioned online.

Also absent from the Internet is any trace of the name's Russian form, which would be written as Вероника Олексиченко or Вероника Алексиченко.

But on April 9, the Sunderland Echo published a letter online attributed to Veronika Oleksychenko. It was the same as that which had been sent to us, with one difference – the opening line.

The piece started: “I moved to the UK in 2010, from Russia, and I soon settled in Sunderland.”

Not only had the area been tweaked, but also the year of arrival, from 2014 to 2010.

Further searches showed similar letters had been published in at least seven other local papers at around the same time.

In the Wilts and Glos Standard, Veronika claimed to be in Gloucester (and we have spoken to the real owner of the house at that address). In the West Sussex County Times, she was a Horsham resident.

The year she “settled” alternated between 2010 and 2014 in these letters.

Shacking up at a retail park?

Next, we took a closer look at the address she gave in her letter to us, 104A Eastgate Road.

The street is real, but 104A is not one of its numbers. In fact, Eastgate Road does not have any residential addresses.

Unless Veronika was shacking up in KFC, Asda, Boots or any of the other businesses at Eastgate Retail Park, we had been given a fake address.

A dig through emails to our sister newspaper, the Bath Chronicle, showed Veronika had contacted the publication.

This time, she had signed off as a resident of 30B High Street, Glastonbury. Again, the street number was an invention. The closest real address, 30 High Street, was that of an estate agency - again, not a residential address.

Perhaps the strangest twist yet was the book Veronika alluded to in the letters.

Self-published in February and available on Amazon in Kindle form, the 354-page novel is titled Dooley Street: The Daughters of Brexit?

The blurb reads: “In the summer of 2030, Lisa Flack was her country’s youngest Prime Minister at the age of 20. In the land of Burchill, Mrs Hatcher and Tony Brown. She arrived in Bellminster and moved into No.10 at a time of unprecedented national crisis.

“Being Prime Minister was actually her first ever job but she was immersed in politics all of her life and had huge confidence in herself. She was adamant that she could resolve the country's many problems and avert civil war, while a conflict in the Federation superstate grew.

“She also sought personal revenge on behalf of her father, who she effectively inherited the party leadership from.”

'Ongoing war in the Federation'

There is little mention of Brexit in the book's surreal opening chapters, but plenty of faces and features from the real political landscape appear to be thinly disguised.

Dooley Street seems to have been swapped in for Downing Street, the Federation for the European Union, and Bellminster for Westminster. There is even a reference to the “Bellminster Bubble”.

The novel paints a grim, almost dystopian vision of Britain in 2030.

Parliament is in its “death throes”, while there are riots and mass breakout attempts across north-east prisons.

The prime minister, Lisa, views Britain’s prisoners as an “enemy” and seeks “personal revenge” against them.

Pursued by “feral dogs”, Lisa is ferried around Bellminster in a car dented by projectiles from “constant” protests.

Foreign tourists are described as “an endangered species”. One is seen taking photos of “a prominent statue of the statesman Nick Clogg” outside Parliament.

Lisa plots to replace the Clogg statue with one of her father. She thinks Parliament “stinks”, blasting its “awful” toilets and dreaming of knocking it all down.

“There is the growing potential for the ongoing war in the Federation to reach our island, if it continues its advance westwards across the continent,” she tells Parliament.

Our email exchange with Veronika

We emailed Veronika to ask if she would speak to us about the points she had made in her letter.

In her response, which came seven hours later, she said she did not want to talk on the phone or meet.

“I would prefer if you just put a letter from me in the paper,” she said. “That would be just fine.”

Though we had not yet asked about her letters to other newspapers, Veronika added: “I have lived all over the UK.

“I first came here in 2010, and lived in Sunderland for 16 months. Then I went back to Russia but I couldn't stand it anymore.

“So I moved permanently to England in 2014. And I have (lived) all over the country, in a few different places.

“But Bristol is such a great city to live in now. I love it.”

In our next email to Veronika, we asked her why she had used fake addresses and posed as a resident of at least nine different areas.

She thanked me for my email and apologised “for any confusion”, before claiming she had no fixed address.

“Where I come from people didn't always tend to usually put their actual address if writing to papers or the authorities, in case of some kind of reprisal,” Veronika added.

“But I have been all over the country since moving here, travelling around, staying temporarily or living for longer, in a large number of places and areas.

"I have been to all regions of the country but I thought and was concerned that if I put 'no fixed address' in my email then there is no way anyone will be interested in my email."

In an abrupt change of subject, Veronika asked: “Do you happen to have any job vacancies at your paper? I know it is a long shot, but maybe for something like trainee reporter?”

Bristol Live did not have any trainee reporter vacancies. We informed Veronika of this in our response.

We also asked her why there was no trace of her name on the Internet, what it was about Brexit that she liked so much, and whether she felt her letters were misleading.

‘Unsocial media’

Veronika replied 10 days later. She said her name was not on social media because she “hates all that stuff”.

She added: “It's just self-central, and self-promotion. Ironically, I don't think it's actually very 'social' in my view. 'Unsocial media.'

“And yes, it is my real name. I've never liked Veronika much, but there you go. It would feel too weird to change it now.

"My emails were sent to try to make people feel better about their town and country, in the light of Brexit. Definitely not to mislead them."

Veronika then told us she supported Brexit for environmental and financial reasons.

She wrote: “The UK could do its own much more stronger anti-pollution and anti-litter policies on its own. With less red tape and barriers on the way.

“The UK is a world leader of finance matters but it still has a lot of bureaucracy from the EU which must slow things down. I don't have a bank account for example but maybe after Brexit it will be easier for me to get one.”

Veronika added that she is not a member of any political party, but she was thinking of joining the Green Party.

“God forbid UKIP!” she wrote. “Anyone but them. I'd rather have Stalin back than UKIP as the government. I mean, at least he had a plan and knew what he was doing.

(Image: Getty Images)

“Caroline Lucas is the MP I would trust most out of the whole of that Parliament. I would like Brexit managed by Caroline Lucas ideally.”

In a bid to verify Veronika’s identity, we asked her if she could send us a photograph of her passport.

She replied: “I don't need an immigration passport as I have multiple citizenships through my relatives. I still feel like an immigrant in the UK though because I didn't grow up here.”

A passport is required to enter the UK. When we asked Veronika how she had entered without one, she said she did have one, but again did not send a photograph of it.

She claimed she had previously submitted letters about endangered insects and Shakespeare to newspapers.

Veronika wrote: “I sent a letter a few months back to a newspaper and I didn't put an address. The editor emailed me and said they wanted to publish it but needed an address.

“I told him that I didn't have a permanent address and he said it didn't matter, just email any address for their official purposes. But I'll have to put where I am now, and hopefully letters will still be published.”

We were unable to find any trace of Veronika’s letters about endangered insects or Shakespeare. When asked for evidence of their existence, she said they were in her friend's loft.

‘Zero online presence until February’

Bristol Live asked disinformation expert Alice Stollmeyer, executive director of the Defending Democracy initiative, for her thoughts on Veronika.

She said: “What raises my suspicion is she has zero online presence until February.

"Even if she 'doesn’t like social media' herself, nowadays your name will be somewhere online. I would say that clearly indicates a fake persona.

“We can’t know if Veronika is really Russian, if that is her real name or even if she is a ‘she’.”

Ms Stollmeyer argued that Veronika came across like a native English speaker rather than someone who had learned it as a second language, pointing to her use of phrases like “knack for it” in emails.

She added: “It occurred to me the letters might have come as an afterthought to the book.

“The book seems to address an audience that is both young and female. That is precisely the audience that is mostly pro-Remain.

“If you could reach a new audience to think a bit more positively about Brexit, that might be it.”

Ms Stollmeyer noted similarities between Veronika’s writing and Russian propaganda.

“One of the narratives in the book is how ‘war in the Federation’ - or Europe - might reach Britain, which is on the verge of civil war," she said.

"Well, one of the recurring pro-Kremlin talking points is the threat of civil war in, and imminent collapse of, EU member states.

“When people think of Russian interference in our democracies, they mostly think of cyberattacks and of bots and trolls spreading disinformation just ahead of the elections.

“But manipulation via ‘influence operations’ is much more subtle than that – and it's taking place 365 days per year, not just during elections.”

'Divisive content'

Russia’s ‘influence operations’ have included using every major social media platform to target American conservatives with posts on issues like immigration, according to a University of Oxford report published last December.

On the day of the Brexit vote in 2016, Russia mobilised 3,800 troll accounts to post more than 1,000 tweets with the hashtag #ReasonsToLeaveEU, the Telegraph reported last year.

Ms Stollmeyer said Russia wants to disrupt Western society, adding: “It's not necessarily about spreading lies, but about amplifying divisive content.”

But she believes it is impossible to be sure of the real story behind Veronika.

“There is no proof that it is anything to do with Russia,” Ms Stollmeyer said.

We put Ms Stollmeyer’s thoughts to Veronika and received an email response two days later.

She wrote: “'Misinformation and the Russian state'. I was talking to my psychologist about this subject, it was really interesting because he is very politically knowledgeable.

“He said I should change my name to Putin, for added effect. In case my last name hadn't already been noticed.

“He likes a little joke. I said yes, very funny.”

UPDATE: We have now spoken to the real owner of one of the houses behind the 'Brexit' letters