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Nicknamed Putin's cook: Prigozhin has excellent connections in the Kremlin
Photo:
Alexei Druzhinin / AP
The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has admitted to being behind a notorious troll factory in Saint Petersburg.
Prigozhin announced on the Internet that he not only financed the facility, which is also known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
"I had the idea, I created it, and I've pursued it for a long time."
Prigozhin is responding to a request from SPIEGEL, the investigative editorial team "Forbidden Stories" and other international media that are jointly researching the topic of disinformation.
The results are published under the keyword »Storykillers«.
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Businessman Prigozhin is a longtime confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He is currently the focus of attention as head of Wagner's private army, which plays an important role in the war in Ukraine.
Prigozhin's mercenary force is also active in Africa.
The trolls who supported Trump
The IRA troll factory is held responsible for large-scale disinformation campaigns in the West.
Several hundred employees are said to have spread fake news in an office building in Saint Petersburg.
US investigators assume that the IRA also interfered in the 2016 presidential election with fake accounts on social networks.
Their ultimate goal: to help Donald Trump to the presidency.
US authorities have offered a reward of up to $10 million for information about Prigozhin.
In his statement, Prigozhin also admitted for the first time that he supports a second troll factory that calls itself "Cyber Front Z".
She emerged on social media shortly after Russia's war of aggression began and now has over 100,000 followers on chat app Telegram.
There, the pro-Kremlin activists spread lies about Russian war crimes and celebrate the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers.
Prigozhin now referred to "Cyber Front Z" as a "group of patriotic bloggers".
He made one of his offices available to them "as their headquarters" and held a meeting with them at the beginning of the war of aggression.
For the first time, an investigative journalist from the Russian magazine "Fontanka" reported that "Cyber Front Z" members were supposed to meet in a restaurant with connections to Prigozhin's corporate empire.
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