This was something that had been brewing for decades, and opinion polls consistently showed a roughly 50/50 split between Leave/Remain in the years running up to the referendum.
There were other forces - and big money, and some non-Russian extra-national actors funneling money, e.g. via Ulster Unionists - at work behind the scenes that deserve more scrutiny because they made more impact. If you look back on the posts on this forum alone (you may need to go back a few pages), you'll see that we've discussed a number of them.
As with the current problems with Catalonia, there seems to be an urge - especially on DU - to overplay the roles of Russia and its bots in events. They usually amount to disinformation adding to an already disinformation-rich media environment. They don't help, but I doubt, in our case anyway, they were decisive. And if you don't think that the UK and Spanish state also run their own disinformation campaigns and bots, then you need to do some reading around the issue (e.g. Google 77th Brigade). They're all at it.
I have no doubt that they may have opportunistically waded in and may have had a marginal effect, but trying to dismiss Brexit as "a Russian intel operation" ignores all the other factors at play and the real problems we face in dealing with and possibly overcoming the damage that's being done to our country by some of our own people.
Our own media have done enough to champion and promote Farage and UKIP and spread plain lies about the EU over the years without Russian meddling, so beware of looking for a "one-size-fits-all" answer to where the drive for the destructive vote came from. We're apparently quite capable of harming ourselves without outside help.
If you want to look for a primary source of the disinformation about the EU, you need look no further than our current Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who started the media trend of EU-bashing, nonsense about straight bananas, etc. etc., as has been well documented.
If you're saying he's a long-term pawn of Russian intel, I'd like to see the evidence, as it might stop him becoming prime minister (though who knows nowadays?).
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