Prigozhinsky millions: as chef Putin created an army of Kremlin trolls

Today, the open access has been hacked by the anonymous international correspondence of the management of the Internet Research Agency (AIS), an office engaged in the organization of pro-Kremlin trolling. Recall that the AII is owned by “Putin’s cook,” the founder of the Concorde holding company, Yevgeny Prigogine (personally acquainted with the president), and the direct management of the company is carried out by Maria Kuprashevich (known for taking jobs in liberal media with the purpose of spying).

Hacked correspondence allows you to assess the real extent of the trolling business and learn more about some of the “promoted topics.”

Judging from the accounting records available to The Insider, the AI ​​is growing rapidly. The total monthly budget increased from 25 million rubles in December to 33 million in April. Moreover, if in January the “information block” consisted of 207 people (6 journalists, 125 “bloggers commentators” in the office, 40 commentators working remotely by day and 36 commentators working at night in shifts), then in April 313 people. The salary of most of them fluctuates around 37-40 thousand rubles (with a load of about 100 comments per day). True, many of them, most likely, are dead souls. Kuprashevich, to all appearances, was stealing a lot from her boss, in any case, the CEO of Mikhail Bystrov reproaches her that she drew at least 10 million into her pocket:

The themes that the trolls were also curious about. Directly, they are not indicated in the correspondence, but some surnames still emerge: for example, in January, the AII collected monitoring of the black PR of Dvorkovich and Khodorkovsky. The report says, for example: “The network is promoting video materials that compromise the activities of Dvorkovich <…>, as well as the Bilalovs and Magomedovs brothers.”

The fact that the Institute itself was the author of the order about Dvorkovich is confirmed by a letter from employee Mikhail Abramov to his colleague Alexei Soskovets: “I offer this format for work in February: You are fully responsible for the subject of the Court and go to the chief to report on it (lately he wants to personally communicate with people who are responsible for the person) “. It is noteworthy that Soskovets sends a report in a reply letter, where he reports among other things: “they wrote texts both for“ D ”and against“ D ”” (“D” means Dvorkovich, which follows from other letters). Why did the AII staff work on two fronts at the same time until the end is unclear, and the only reasonable explanation is that they mastered two budgets at once.

But the report of the AII for the period from January 1 to 10, 2014, in which some topics also slip (spelling preserved):

“Over the past period, 9 posts were written. 1 post on the topic of Putin’s New Year’s address, 3 posts on the topic of terrorist attacks in Volgograd, 2 posts on the topic of drunk driving, Navalny, 3 posts on the topic “Putin”. Three posts were displayed in the top.

Also over the past period, work was carried out on Twitter. On January 10, a link to the post “BULK DRIVING AT DRIVE” was distributed on twitter in mass order. More than 1,100 tweets with the link http://fotoksi.livejournal.com/147828.html to this post were indexed by Yandex (Appendix No. 14).

On January 2, a hashtag about Putin’s New Year’s address appeared on Twitter trends. The hashtag managed to be raised to 15th place, but the top 10 is important. The reasons for which it was not possible to raise the following are as follows: a) the whole team departed for the New Year holidays; b) in connection with this, we had to work on anything, and not on our own trained working machines; c) there were various hashes about Sherlock’s series in the trends all day long, replacing each other, indicating a well-prepared and professionally executed order for PR of the new series of the third season of the series.”

In another report, the following topics appear: “Sochi”, “Maidan”, “Doctrine of 2050” (order about the fictional plans of the US State Department), “I am a patriot” (ordering against Khodorkovsky, Navalny, Alferov2, PussyRiot, Prokhorov, Khakamada and Nemtsov).

If the current rate of spending continues, the “trolling farm” will cost Prigogine about $ 10 million per year. And that’s not all the expenses. In the correspondence found other projects with the same organizers. For example, the news agency Kharkiv (NAH) costs Prigogine a little over a million rubles a month, the Nevskiye Novosti newspaper costs 3 million, and the eponymous agency just over 2 million a month.

It is curious, by the way, that back in November 2013, when Euromaidan was just beginning, the branch of the NAM in Simferopol had already developed a “Project on the organization of activities aimed at strengthening the influence of the Russian Federation on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, South-East of Ukraine (New Russia) , as well as Ukraine as a whole. ” The goal of the project was: “at least winning local council elections in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and southeastern Ukraine (Novorossiya), active participation and significant influence on the situation in the struggle for the presidency, the formation of a large faction in the Supreme Council of Ukraine, and appointment of his supporters to key posts in government and local self-government ”. Thus, the idea of ​​“Novorossiya” under control of Moscow was actively promoted even during the existence of Yanukovych, more than three months before the revolution.

The case of Yevgeny Prigogine is in many ways reminiscent of the situation with Konstantin Malofeyev (see material Marshall Malofeyev. How the Russian raider captured the South-East of Ukraine). Both of them owe their sudden success to connections in the Kremlin, and both “work out” success on the “patriotic” front. And given their level of income, they remain a good win.

http://theins.ru/politika/857/

Where the trolls live. And who feeds them

Special report from the office where they hang noodles in three shifts

Cottage opposite the railway station Olgino. Here is the trolls lair

In St. Petersburg and Moscow, Internet trolls are operating in specially equipped offices, which praise Sergei Sobyanin and Vladimir Putin, curse Alexey Navalny, America and defend Syria. The “New” correspondent went to the trolls for an interview and found out that in St. Petersburg they were run by actress Maria Kuprashevich, one of the Seliger’s former organizers, who didn’t calm down at all, who was introduced to the Russian media in her time, to discredit them.

“Internet operators are required! Work in a luxurious office in OLGINO !!!! (m. Old Village), payment 25 960 per month. Task: posting comments on specialized Internet sites, writing thematic posts, blogs, social networks. Screenshots reports. Work schedule is selected individually. Payment is weekly, 1180 per shift (from 8.00 to 16.00, from 10.30 to 18.30, from 14.00 to 22.00). PAYMENTS WEEKLY AND FREE FOOD !!! Employment official or under the contract (at will). Learning is possible! ”

This announcement appeared on social networks in late August.

On the way

Fifteen minutes from the metro station “Staraya Derevnya”, opposite the railway station Olgino. Huge snow-white cottage. Security guard, secretary and cabinets with the words “Management of bloggers and commentators”, “Rapid Response Department”, “CEO Department”, “Journalists”, “Creative Department”, “Commentators Department”, “Bloggers Department”, “Social Network Specialists Department” . On the third floor – office management and conference room.

The order “On clarifications of a disciplinary nature” addressed to employees of the Internet Research Agency LLC, for example, prohibits “close personal contacts on the territory of the business complex”. Separate postscript for the office manager: “on windows without the agreement of the administrator Oksana not hang anything.” From the register information it follows that the organization was registered on July 26, 2013. The founder is Mikhail Kurkin, the general director is Nikolai Chumakov.

Alexey Soskovets is meeting us with a friend – a native of youth political tusk. In the “friends” of “VKontakte” he has a mass of activists from the Nashi movement, the “Young Guard of United Russia” and the staff of the St. Petersburg youth policy committee, including the former head of the committee, Nikita Aleksandrov.

In 2013, the North-West Service Agency, owned by Soskovets, won 18 competitions for celebrations, forums and sports days for St. Petersburg authorities. The agency participated in half of the contests alone. In the summer of 2013, she won a competition for transport services for the Seliger camp participants.

Load – 100 comments per day

While the questionnaires were filled in, Alexey described our functionality. According to him, now they are engaged in increasing the index of some articles. “Articles are different – social, business, political, and the like. We act according to the Yandex Market principle, he began. “Yandex Market is a huge online store that tells you where to buy.” Under each product there is a comment from people who say that this is a great phone, this is a bad phone. Alas, the realities of life are such that not always people want to be the first to write comments. We need to increase site traffic. This can be done by robots, but robots do their work mechanically, and sometimes a system like “Yandex” bans them. Therefore, it was decided to make it people. Write a comment from yourself with the vector we specified. For example, you can write about the G-20, which is very honorable for Russia, but it is inconvenient for me to get home. ”

I ask whether it is required of me, as of a troll, to enter into a discussion. “Somewhere is required, somewhere is not, but there is no point in introducing controversy, because people at the other end want to chat, and you have a working day. They answered six lines, then one, and that’s it, – explains Alexey. – We’ll throw off all the sites and links to articles that should be oriented. According to the norms, you need to write about 100 comments per day. ”

When asked what the topics will be after the G-20, he answers hesitantly: “There will be orders. We still do not know ourselves. There are a lot of events in the political and business sphere that they say will be fulfilled. ”

From the conversation it becomes clear that the “leadership” promised: the whole structure would last until the New Year, and then they would like to transfer the agency to the category of business projects. “Now we are recruiting people, we act in several cities – Moscow, St. Petersburg,” Aleksey specifies. He says that they are not related to Nashists, but he does not exclude that something similar will turn out.

Suddenly asks how we relate to Navalny and Sobyanin? We make indifferent persons.

“Did you go to Seliger?”

Hour from an hour is not easier.

“And I drove people to Seliger for several years.” With Yakemenko familiar, fortunately or unhappily. Here, in St. Petersburg, I know many. When Nikita Alexandrov was put on the head of the youth committee, I was very neighing. He was running as an activist when I was doing Seliger. And then – bang – they call me from Smolny and they say that your chum became the chairman of the committee.

Exposeers

We passed the interview successfully, we are required to copy passports, because the alleged landlords are tough guys, and without them we will not be allowed. The next day we come in full confidence that we were exposed, the operation failed, because a couple of mouse clicks will be calculated by the Novaya correspondent. However, Soskovets happily escorts to the workplace – in two hours you need to write two posts about the Education Law. Two thousand characters from the nose. We write.

On the desktops are saved screenshots of the work of predecessors who scold America and Navalny. Like, in the states closely (because of the skyscrapers), people are rude and greedy, and the films are spiritless, but our cinema, on the contrary, rises from its knees. A hundred comments consists of solid stamps and stereotypes. On the desktop, a colleague from the newspaper “Moi Rayon”, who also infiltrated the “troll den” screenshots exposing the magazine Forbes.

Recall that in the spring of this year, Forbes was in the center of a scandal, where an interview with businessman Sergei Solovyov was published as advertising. Then in the Newspaper on the newspapers, where Maria Mayorova (the former employer of Maria Kuprashevich) serves as the editor-in-chief, they published a material accusing Forbes of publishing orders. By the time it coincided with powerful DDoS attacks on some media. Forbes had to fight back not only from them, but also from numerous Internet users who accused the publication of being corrupt. And all these posts of “outraged” citizens in front of our eyes – on a computer desk. The only strange thing is that the Internet Research Agency LLC was registered at the end of July, and the trolls attacked Forbes in the spring. Has the office been renamed or did it work without registration?

Is that the same Mary?

We still do not trust anything serious – newcomers after all. Only G-20 and Education Act. They explain that a few days ago an oppositionist penetrated into the office, and now because of her “quarantine” was introduced.

The tall blonde enters the office. Interested in those present, whether everything is normal. She is like two peas in a pod like “Masha Hari” – actress Maria Kuprashevich, who got a job in the liberal media for the purpose of spying. It was highlighted in Novaya Gazeta, Moskovsky Komsomolets, and in the St. Petersburg Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru. A colleague from My District also recognized Masha Kuprashevich as a blonde. We find her “VKontakte”, we write: they say, we work together, we want to make friends. A strange correspondence is fastened:

Alexandra: I saw you at the Internet Research Agency in Olgino, where I came to get a job. You asked us there, are the conditions satisfactory and is everything ok? Were in a blue dress.

Maria: I do not remember you. And why did you decide that I work there?

Alexandra: Well, you approached, asked the staff whether everything was normal, whether computers worked well, etc.

Maria:???

More she did not answer us.

In friends with Maria, we find a certain Elena Kupriyanov – she is mentioned in the job ad to trolls, in the same place – her telephone number. (By the way, all the announcements and phone numbers on the Kupriyanova page after publication in the newspaper “My District” were removed from the Network.)

In the evening, Alexey Soskovets wrote “VKontakte”: “Good afternoon, Alexandra. Glad to see you”. I answered: we were very surprised to see Maria Kuprashevich in your office. Alexey didn’t refute Masha Hari’s participation in the project, he simply chose not to get in touch anymore.

“We are not doing such garbage!”

We have contacted Nadezhda Orlova, Deputy Chairman of the Youth Policy Committee of St. Petersburg: do you order left posts about the Twenty, etc.?

Orlova (she, by the way, VKontakte is listed as a friend of Soskovets) boiled over: “Soskovets is our contractor, won our contests and is now submitting documentation, but we didn’t know what else he was doing. Trolling is awful! By his activities, he undermines the credibility of social networks. We are not engaged in such garbage. ”

We sent a correspondent to Olgino for an official comment from the troll factory. The girl behind the counter otchekanila: “Let’s passport, I will scan it. Outerwear, bag and mobile leave here. ” After a while, a young man joined her. When it turned out that the correspondent was working in Novaya Gazeta, there was a long pause. “Then it’s not for me,” the guy squeezed out. The girl insisted that she still needed to scan a passport.

It soon became clear that there are no bosses and there will be no, you can leave a phone number – they will call you back on Monday.

– Who will call me back? What is your supervisor’s name?

– The manual itself will tell you who it is.

– And those bad things that write about you, right?

“Of course, it’s not true,” the young man says and clarifies that in fact in this office he is only responsible for the work of the cooler.

Readers, most likely, have a question: who, in fact, pays for the existence of this “nest of trolls” and who, accordingly, orders music for them – that is, designates themes for trolling and places accents? Definitely can not answer, but you can assume.

Our assumptions are based on facts. First, the last girl in this office showed up a girl named Kuprashevich, who is also Masha Hari, who was introduced to Novaya Gazeta by people of the Kremlin cook Prigogine (see nos. 65 and 69 for this year). Maria Kuprashevich, as Nova found out, worked for the PR department of the Prigogine company Konkord and was still listed in a certain LLC Principium.

Secondly, the Troll’s Nest serves PR campaigns to discredit Dmitry Bykov, Forbes magazine and other media. These attempts are related to the St. Petersburg Newspaper about Newspapers, which is headed by Maria Mayorova (in combination with the head of Principion LLC) and to which some Andrei Mikhailov is involved (he is also one of the curators of Masha Hari). It is this gentleman who is the headliner of the provocation against Dmitry Bykov, organized with the help of the fake “deputy candidate” Sergei Solovyov. All these three characters even arranged a joint press conference, which was actively promoted by the trolls from Olgino. And the whole story also got into the program of the TV dishonest Karaulov, which was devoted to attacks on liberal leaders of public opinion.

Third, the newspaper Gazeta about Newspapers report on its activities and the plan for further measures to discredit the Russian media were found among working papers of the PR department of the Prigogine company Concord, which, by the way, was first discussed after the premiere of the film Anatomy of Protest – part of the provocative filming was then organized by the prigozhinsky PR people.

It seems to us that these facts are enough for any person who has the ability to think logically.

http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/59889.html

Today, there was confirmation that the network has a team of paid pro-Kremlin commentators

Anonymous International exposed the activities of the Internet Research Agency, an organization that feeds on budget money, creating an illusion of support for the Kremlin regime on the Internet using custom comments. Interestingly, the agency’s owner is the founder of the Concorde holding company, Yevgeny Prigogine, known as “Cook Putin”, and the direct management of the company is Maria Kuprashevich, known for taking a job in liberal media with the purpose of spying.

Link to this reddit

http://is.gd/TwIgDq

Here is a website where you can read more about what happened.

http://b0ltai.wordpress.com

But the archives of correspondence

1 Part One.
https://mega.co.nz/#!XpgUXIYa!XcjPKUZC7322tKKpls8VPRzB1QkgcAYbhhbNWfag8vE
2 Second part.
https://mega.co.nz/#!X5gSBBBZ!W9Iw2Q_sdkxBbFKR-yhnykQd8V4RQ9tcPt5Gdt128HA
3 The third part of the correspondence.
https://mega.co.nz/#!rhInhRCY!vM93jwt37kGdugOaO-HeO-o9vloYFUU_Nkt-ii_-3Wo
It was found that there is a whole staff of people working in a strict accountability mode to the curators, and writing paid pro-government comments on the Internet.
Average zp such a “commentator” writing “politically correct” posts – from 30 to 40 thousand rubles.
Propaganda is conducted on two fronts – both on the Russian Internet and abroad.
Each department has its own “experts”, the total expenditure on which for the last month amounted to 33 million rubles.
As a confirmation of the reality of the above, it is enough to compare the scans of passports found in the hacked mail with the real accounts of people in the social. networks.
Here are some of them –
The general list of office workers is http://i.imgur.com/mPkShqP.jpg
Executive Director
Burchik Mikhail Leonidovich (12/21/1958)
www.vk.com/id48410950
Head of IT department
Osadchy I.I.
www.vk.com/igor_osa
Leading expert in the “bloggers and commentators” department
Lebedyantseva Olga Igorevna (3/15/1992)
www.vk.com/id19225221
Internal Control Specialist in Human Resources
Kononov Denis Valerievich (11/8/1973)
www.vk.com/id133319400
Themselves commentators:
Solovyova Anastasia Vladimirovna, July 15, 1992
www.vk.com/scheff_solovey
http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/profile/350505734553
Klemazova Ksenia Vyacheslavovna, March 9, 1984
http://my.mail.ru/list/klxenija/
Anna Zhurba April 8, 1979,
www.vk.com/id40713808
Katarina Aistova June 11
www.vk.com/id1392611
Eude Rudenko, December 5, 1988
www.vk.com/id1620766
Irina Bulykina, 27 years old, Moscow
http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/irina.bulykina
Ekaterina Kiseleva, July 24, 1988, St. Petersburg
www.vk.com/kiseleva
Alexey Fernyuk, April 28, St. Petersburg
www.vk.com/worldfounder
A number of media outlets have already spoken about this agency and the hacking incident:
UAINFO
http://uainfo.org/yandex/332255-v-seti-deystvitelno-rabotaet-banda-kremlevskih-trolley-imena-adresa-dokumenty.html
New Newspaper
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/society/59903.html
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/inquests/58063.html
Compromat.ru
http://www.compromat.ru/page_34616.htm
The insider
http://theins.ru/politika/857/
http://theins.ru/politika/872/
Mr7
http://www.mr7.ru/articles/102680/
Grani.ru
http://grani.ru/Internet/m.229440.html
anonymus
http://anonymous.fm/novosti/prigojin_platil_kremlebotam_25_millionov_v_mesyats___kak_oni_delyat_dengi
Fontanka
http://blog.fontanka.ru/posts/159376/
Die welt
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article128584422/Anatomie-des-russischen-Infokriegs-in-Netzwerken.html
Storm News
http://shturmnovosti.com/view.php?COLLCC=1075680880&id=66197
Peter and Mazepa
http://petrimazepa.com/ru/nasha-today.html
Voronz (Serozha and Yura)
http://voronz.in.ua/recomend/1-6-14-19952
LJ
http://hackjvc.livejournal.com/914560.html
http://a-nikonov.livejournal.com/1895404.html
Rustem Adagamov

Список работников прачечной http://t.co/hDV3m39K72 Одна смена комментатора в соцсетях стоит 2150 р. Негусто, в общем

— Roustem Adagamov (@adagamov) May 31, 2014

Alexey Navalny

Смешно, что ботами занимается 'повар путина' http://t.co/OOS3KJLtS6

— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) June 1, 2014

Addresses:
Internet Research Agency
St. Petersburg, Lakhtinsky pr. 129
Tel. 8 (812) 244 27 00
The owner is the founder of the Concorde holding Evgeny Prigogine
Company management – Maria Kuprashevich
TIN: 7805627478
http://rghost.ru/56006988 addresses in pdf
ATTENTION
The Executive Director of the Internet Research Agency (Mikhail Leonidovich Burchik) confesses to the crime and gets in touch.
http://burchik-ru.livejournal.com/838.html
ATTENTION
The connection of the leader of the ultra-right organization Svetlaya Rus, Igor Mangushev, with the Nashi was discovered.
www.vk.com/id134493542
www.vk.com/dezinsektor
Telephone – +79685263189
In the office kremlebotov found large cash theft.
Rats flee from the ship. Record from the office kremlebotov:
https://soundcloud.com/shaltai-1/004-1

On a grand scale

Staffing office in Olgino.

Trolls for work in LJ pay 2,150 rubles per shift.

http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4628235.html