Not satisfied with sowing discord over the internet, the Kremlin put agents on the ground. In the summer of 2014, Prigozhin instructed Alexandra Krylova and another IRA employee, the data analyst Anna Bogacheva, to apply for US visas, according to the indictment, in order ‘to collect intelligence for their interference operations’. The women falsely stated that they were travelling to the US for personal reasons and concealed their place of employment. They equipped themselves with cameras, SIM cards and untraceable burner phones, agreeing on pre-planned ‘evacuation scenarios’ in case something went wrong. Between 4 and 26 June, Krylova and Bogacheva travelled through Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas and New York, for the purpose of what the indictment calls ‘the collection of intelligence’.
With the election approaching, that intelligence was put to practical use. Pretending to be grassroots US activists, the IRA began organising political rallies in several states, building attendance through fake social media accounts and emboldening the administrators of political activist groups. Using the email address allforusa@yahoo.com, they distributed press notices promoting a ‘March for Trump’ in New York in June 2016, contacting rally organisers with an offer to ‘give you money to print posters and get a megaphone’. The following month, they helped mount a rally in Washington, DC to promote false claims that Hillary Clinton planned to introduce Sharia law in the US, hiring people to carry banners with a picture of Clinton and the slogan, ‘I think Sharia Law will be a powerful new direction of freedom.’ They supported a ‘Down with Hillary’ rally later in July, sending out press releases to more than 30 media organisations and paying for Facebook ads. In August, they helped coordinate ‘Florida for Trump’ rallies, using their fake social media personas to communicate with Trump campaign staff. ‘Florida is still a purple state,’ they messaged via Facebook, ‘and we need to paint it red … What about organizing a YUGE [sic] pro-Trump flash mob in every Florida town?’ The ads got 8,300 likes, with users being clicked through to the IRA’s fake Facebook page ‘Being Patriotic.’
Mueller calculates that the IRA posted more than 80,000 items between 2015 and 2017, and that more than 126 million Americans viewed its propaganda. For the Florida rallies, they arranged for a lorry with a prison cage on it to join the parade, paying a local woman to appear as Hillary Clinton in prison uniform. At further events in New York and Pennsylvania, Mueller reports, the IRA paid protesters to join the rallies.
One of the most insidious – and most effective – tactics of Putin’s trolls was to spread rumours of voter fraud. As a trial run, at the time of the Democratic primaries, the IRA posted fake reports that Clinton had somehow ‘stolen’ the Iowa caucuses from Bernie Sanders. Encouraged by signs of controversy and division among Democratic voters, Prigozhin repeated the trick by circulating allegations of illegal mail-in votes for Clinton in Broward County, Florida. The tactic found fertile ground. As far back as 2012, Donald Trump had made unfounded accusations that the election had been rigged by Barack Obama (‘This election is a total sham and a travesty! We are not a democracy!’) and in the summer of 2016 he was warning that the impending election was going to be rigged by Hillary Clinton. It was easy to prey on the fears of voters and Putin’s campaign increased the atmosphere of unease. By the time of the 2020 election, the trope of voter fraud and stolen elections had become so ingrained in the American consciousness that Trump was able to convince many of his supporters that they had been ‘robbed’. Putin and Prigozhin could congratulate each other that the group entrusted with sowing doubt and distrust in democracy had succeeded in the first phase of its mission.
It is evident from the Mueller Report that the IRA operated with remarkable self-confidence. Its directors knew from the US media that the FBI was tracking suspicious activity by Russian bots and trolls, but did nothing to scale back its operations. Not until the autumn of 2017, when Congress ordered Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to reveal the identities of suspect groups that had used their services, did Prigozhin’s operatives begin to panic. On 13 September, a senior IRA specialist, Irina Kaverzina, emailed a friend: ‘We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke) … so I got preoccupied with covering our tracks, together with colleagues.’ As for the successful impact of her work, Kaverzina was in no doubt. ‘I created all these pictures and posts,’ she wrote, ‘and the Americans believed that it was written by their people!’ It was a taunt that was echoed by Prigozhin himself in February 2018, when the IRA was indicted by the FBI. ‘The Americans are very impressionable people,’ he commented wryly, ‘and they see what they want to see. I am not upset at all … If they want to see the devil, let them see him.’ His subversive activities would earn him a place on the US sanctions roster, a criminal indictment and, in February 2021, elevation to the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
FBI ‘wanted’ notice for Yevgeny Prigozhin
The Mueller Report caused much indignation among the American public – it isn’t nice to learn that a foreign government is sneaking around, trying to mess with your thoughts and opinions. But I do wonder what exactly Putin was hoping to achieve by hacking the US election. It is possible, but unlikely, that he had some sort of pact with – or some means of influence over – Donald Trump. It is possible he thought Trump would be easier to push around, or that he was overcome with hatred for Hillary Clinton, who had called him out on numerous occasions when she was secretary of state. But very few people in Russia would be particularly impressed by or overly interested in Putin achieving that sort of outcome.
Putin may have had another aim in mind, however, when he instructed Prigozhin to stir up trouble, one that would have a big effect on Russian opinion. People in the West tend to think that Putin runs Russia with effortless ease, that he has the whole country under his shiny, platform-soled heel. But he isn’t talented as a manager or hardworking or even a good organiser. And he knows that things in Russia are not going well. The US election allowed him to create the impression that things are going well, a fantasy of pretence and fake claims to paper over the reality. Just like in the times of Catherine the Great, Putin has created his own Potemkin villages – but instead of erecting fake villages on the ground in Russia, he is creating citadels of fake news and history on a global platform, that is online. He projects a mirage of wellbeing to force the Russian people to believe in it and to stave off the day when they finally realise their emperor has no clothes.
But even Putin’s Truman Show falters at times and the parlous state of Russia becomes too big to ignore. At moments like these, he needs a way of explaining to the Russian people why not everything in the garden is rosy. He needs someone to blame. He can’t blame the political opposition, because he cleaves to the image of a powerful president who has dealt with internal opposition and crushed them into irrelevance. So, instead, Putin turns to America. In Putin’s cosmology, America takes the blame for everything. The US is big and powerful, capable of inflicting all sorts of woes on Russia, a most convenient enemy for Putin to have or, perhaps, for him to invent.
Putin’s preoccupation is always with his domestic audience and with how his image will play with the Russian people. Prigozhin’s IRA allowed him to demonstrate to the Russian people that American democracy is corrupt. Putin may not have been overly concerned with backing Trump; but he did want to convince the Russian people that the vote was being falsified in favour of Hillary. He wanted to provoke outrage among Trump supporters, so they would proclaim to the world that the US system was rotten.