Yevgeny Prigozhin admits he is founder of so-called ‘trolls factory’

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of PMC Wagner, has admitted his ties with the Internet Research Agency, commonly known as “the trolls factory”, his press department reveals.

“I wasn’t just a sponsor for the Internet Research Agency. It was my idea from the very start, I created it, and I used to run it for a long time. It was established to protect Russia’s information space from the thuggish and aggressive Western propaganda of anti-Russian points,” Prigozhin said.

Robert Mueller, a former Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice who investigated the possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, accused Yevgeny Prigozhin of interfering with the election by using fake accounts on social media. Prigozhin denied the accusations.

In 2013, Novaya Gazeta published an investigation on the “trolls factory”, an organisation involved in manipulating public opinion by posting and commenting on social and regular media.