Internet Research Agency

The Internet Research Agency (IRA; Russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, romanized: Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy; 2013–2023), also known as Glavset (Russian: Главсеть, lit. 'Central Network'), and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino (ольгинские тролли, olginskiye trolli) or Kremlinbots (кремлеботы), was a Russian company which was engaged in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. It was linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Russian oligarch who was leader of the Wagner Group, and based in Saint Petersburg. The agency was first mentioned in a 2015 article by Adrian Chen in The New York Times, which detailed its operations, although it gained further attention when Russian journalist Andrey Zakharov published his investigation into Prigozhin’s "troll factory". The January 2017 report issued by the United States Intelligence Community—Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections—described the agency as a troll farm: "The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close ally of [Vladimir] Putin with ties to Russian intelligence," commenting that "they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—[and] started to advocate for candidate Trump as early as December 2015." The agency employed fake accounts registered on major social networking sites, discussion boards, online newspaper sites, and video hosting services to promote the Kremlin's interests in domestic and foreign policy including Ukraine and the Middle East as well as attempting to influence the 2016 United States presidential election. More than 1,000 employees reportedly worked in a single building of the organization in 2015. The extent to which the organization tried to influence public opinion using social media became better known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed News article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year. The Internet Research Agency gained more attention by June 2015, when one of its offices was reported as having data from fake accounts used for biased Internet trolling. Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks. On 16 February 2018, a United States grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities, including the Internet Research Agency, on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere "with U.S. elections and political processes", according to the Justice Department. On 1 July 2023, it was announced that the Internet Research Agency would be shut down following the aftermath of the Wagner Group rebellion.

Origin

In Leningrad Oblast in the late 1970s, Vladimir Putin's first KGB post was with the 5th Department, which countered dissidents with disinformation using active measures, and was strongly supported by Filipp Bobkov and the head of the KGB Yuri Andropov, who believed in "stamping out dissent". Revealed on 16 August 2012 in an article by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, the website for the company Medialogia offered a system known as Prisma terminals (Russian: Терминалы «Призма») which, according to Farit Khusnoyarov, Prism could track for the Kremlin in near real time the stand-alone blog platforms and social networks of nearly 60 million sites and could analyze the tone of the statements of each of these sources with a lag of several minutes or given as an estimated error of 2–3% almost in real time. The article called the terminals Volodin's Prism (Russian: Призма Володина) for Vyacheslav Volodin. After the Snow revolution following the 4 December 2011 Russian legislative elections, Volodin actively used his Prism terminal, which he received on the eve of the elections, to counter dissidents in Russia. Others using Prisma include Sergei Naryshkin's office in the State Duma, senior officials at the Main Center for Communications and Information Security (Russian: Главный центр связи и информационной безопасности) in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) senior officials at Moscow City Hall and employees close to the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin. The Internet Research Agency was founded in mid-2013. In 2013, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that Internet Research Agency Ltd's office was in Olgino, a historic district of Saint Petersburg. Uncovered by Anonymous International and made public in June 2014, Vyacheslav Volodin is a strong supporter of the interests of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the trolls at the Internet Research Agency. The terms "Trolls from Olgino" and "Olgino's trolls" (Russian: "Тролли из Ольгино", "Ольгинские тролли") have become general terms denoting trolls who spread pro-Russian propaganda, not only necessarily those based at the office in Olgino. Information of the work being conducted at the Agency comes in part from interviews with former employees. In February 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company Wagner Group, stated that he founded the IRA: "I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time." The admission came months after Prigozhin had admitted to Russian interference in U.S. elections.

Organizers

Strategic Russian newspaper Vedomosti links the approved-by-Russian-authorities strategy of public consciousness manipulation through new media to Vyacheslav Volodin, first deputy of the Vladimir Putin Presidential Administration of Russia.

Tactical

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