I read one particular indictment generated by the Mueller inquiry with especial interest. The defendants in it were named as ‘The Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), its leadership and affiliates’. Issued in February 2018, its 37 pages read like a spy thriller and made clear that the inoffensive-sounding ‘Research Agency’ was in fact a hotbed of subversion, and it was run by Prigozhin.
Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency was founded in 2013 in a suburb of St Petersburg. It was paid for by money from Prigozhin’s Concord catering conglomerate, a business entity described by Mueller as having ‘various Russian government contracts’ and which, as we have already seen, acts as a conduit for large-scale Kremlin funding of Putin’s black operations. The IRA set about recruiting IT-literate employees, mainly young marketing and computer graduates, offering salaries far higher than those available elsewhere, and put them to work producing a flood of pro-Putin, anti-Western propaganda. The online comments of the IRA trolls – attacking foreign and domestic critics of the Kremlin, including myself, and accusing Western countries of repression at home and abroad – hit the internet with a tsunami of disinformation and bile. Putin’s political opponents were mocked and slandered; the leaders of Ukraine were described as fascists and Nazis. Using bots and automated delivery algorithms, the IRA became so notorious that by 2014 it was widely referred to as the Troll Factory.
Prigozhin appointed three of his cronies to run the operation. Its chief executive was reported to be a former St Petersburg police officer, Colonel Mikhail Bystrov; its executive director, Mikhail Burchik, was a young tech entrepreneur; and its chief deputy director, Alexandra Krylova, had previously worked at Prigozhin’s Federal News Agency. Between them they ran the IRA as a streamlined digital marketing firm, with departments generating editorial content, graphics and search engine data analysis, and trolling targets. They had an HR unit to oversee recruitment, staff incentivisation, finance and budgeting.
By the spring of 2014, the operation had nearly 1,000 employees and was expanding. A new unit, at first secretive but then widely touted within the organisation, was set up. The blandly named Translator Project was tasked with ‘focusing on the US population and conducting operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter’. An internal IRA memo defined its remit as American electoral politics and its aim ‘to spread distrust toward candidates and the political system in general’.
The Translator Project conducted research into American voting patterns, political campaigning and the demographics of party affiliation, coordinating with the Kremlin in defining the tasks that Vladimir Putin would set for them. As Robert Mueller would later report, the operation was always focused on the end goal of the 2016 presidential election, the political event that mattered more to Putin than any other: ‘The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with US political and electoral processes, including the 2016 US presidential election.’
The Translator Project infiltrated groups dedicated to politics and social issues on US media sites, monitoring the popularity and engagement of online conversations, including the frequency of posts and the nature of comments or responses. Its employees adopted fake social media identities, pretending to be Americans, and the IRA’s IT department set up a network of proxy servers to conceal the fact that they were posting from Russia. ‘In order to collect additional intelligence,’ Mueller reported, ‘defendants and their co-conspirators posed as US persons and contacted US political and social activists’, communicating with ‘unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump Campaign involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups that supported then-candidate Trump’.
Translator Project operatives would eventually run hundreds of accounts with fictitious American identities, with the stated aim of becoming ‘leaders of public opinion’. Working round the clock to hit all the US time zones, they were instructed to ‘inflame political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with the social and economic situation, and oppositional social movements’. To that end, their pages on Facebook and Instagram fomented unrest about the Obama administration. Under the title, ‘Secured Borders’, one online group strove to fuel voters’ anger at the Democrats’ alleged failure to curb immigration. Another fanned the flames of racial discontent with a Black Lives Matter-style page titled ‘Blacktivist’. Yet others appealed to old north–south resentments with groups named ‘South United’ and ‘Heart of Texas’ or targeted religious groups with pages such as ‘United Muslims of America’ and ‘Army of Jesus’. United Muslims of America encouraged Muslims to boycott the elections because ‘most of the American Muslim voters refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton’. And an IRA fake Instagram account titled ‘Woke Blacks’ declared, ‘A particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Hillary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d be surely better off without voting at all.’
The IRA’s Twitter accounts that served as cheerleaders for Trump appeared to be authentically American, with like hashtags like @TEN_GOP, ‘Tennessee GOP’, and were retweeted by senior Trump officials including General Mike Flynn, Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump Junior. By having each fake account repost, retweet and promote the content of the others, Prigozhin’s trolls were able to amass hundreds of thousands of followers. ‘Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants’ means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the US political system,’ Mueller’s indictment says. ‘They had the strategic goal to sow discord.’
Prigozhin’s team decided on key messages and on key targets for their attack bots, pouring vitriol on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, using all available means to boost the Trump campaign. English language specialists monitored the team’s posts to ‘ensure they appear authentic’ and offered guidance on wording and visual content. A system of bonuses encouraged workers to make extra effort and compete with their peers. The monthly budget of Prigozhin’s IRA was now estimated to be around $1.25 million.
When campaigning commenced for the 2016 election, the IRA took out fake political advertisements, paid for via a shadowy internet agency. As many as 10 million people viewed the ads, which promoted divisive political and social messages, supporting Trump and attacking Clinton. Not content with buying their own publicity, the trolls began opening counterfeit PayPal accounts in the names of unsuspecting US citizens, stealing their Social Security numbers and driving licence details to authenticate the payments. The accounts were used to purchase advertisements with messages like, ‘Trump is our only hope for a better future’, ‘Support the Second Amendment’, ‘Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote’ and ‘Ohio Wants Hillary 4 Prison’. The IRA bosses instructed employees to ‘use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump – we support them) … it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton’.