Inside the Internet Research Agency’s lie machine
Serving up fake news for Mr Putin’s chef
“INTERNET operators needed! Work in a chic office in OLGINO!!!!” read the ad posted in August 2013. “The task: posting comments on relevant internet-sites, writing thematic posts, blogs, social networks.” The job, an undercover reporter who applied for it discovered, was with the then new, now notorious Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the catering baron in charge of the IRA, started off as a hot-dog seller in St Petersburg. One of the restaurants he went on to own, New Island, became a favourite of Vladimir Putin’s. That led to opportunities beyond the kitchen, from troll armies at home to private military contractors deployed in Syria. Mr Prigozhin operates far enough outside official structures to allow ministries to claim ignorance of his doings, but his Concord companies, which Robert Mueller’s indictment (see article) says stood behind the IRA, still made a fortune from working with the Russian state. One of his firms made $8.15bn from the Russian government for catering services in 2011-17, according to an analysis by Reuters.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "A troll’s life"
From the February 24th 2018 edition
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