Wagner chief admits to founding Russian troll farm sanctioned for meddling in US elections | CNN

CNN
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Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian non-public navy firm Wagner, admitted on Tuesday to founding the Web Analysis Company, a infamous troll farm that the US authorities has sanctioned for interfering in American elections.

A Wagner Telegram channel on Tuesday printed a press release from Prigozhin, asking him to react to the suggestion that he was the founding father of the company.

“I react with pleasure,” Prigozhin stated within the assertion. “I’ve by no means simply been the financier of the Web Analysis Company. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a very long time. It was based to guard the Russian info house from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the West.”

The US Treasury Division sanctioned the Web Analysis Company (IRA) in 2018, accusing it of getting “created and managed an unlimited variety of faux on-line personas that posed as reputable US individuals to incorporate grassroots organizations, curiosity teams, and a state political celebration on social media.”

“By means of this exercise, the IRA posted 1000’s of advertisements that reached hundreds of thousands of individuals on-line. The IRA additionally organized and coordinated political rallies through the run-up to the 2016 election, all whereas hiding its Russian id. Additional, the IRA unlawfully utilized personally identifiable info from US individuals to open monetary accounts to assist fund IRA operations.”

Prigozhin’s feedback on Tuesday come a number of months after he admitted to interfering within the US democratic course of and pledged to take action once more, in what seemed to be the primary admission of a high-level meddling marketing campaign from somebody near the Kremlin.

“Gents, we interfered, we intervene and we’ll intervene,” Prigozhin stated in November, at some point earlier than the US midterm elections. “Rigorously, exactly, surgically and in our personal approach, as we all know how. Throughout our pinpoint operations, we’ll take away each kidneys and the liver directly.”

Prigozhin is just not a member of the Russian authorities, however has shut ties to the president and has been dubbed “Vladimir Putin’s chef” after he started catering occasions for the Kremlin.

Whereas he as soon as operated largely within the shadows, his public profile has grown in current months as his Wagner fighters have turn into extra central to Russia’s struggle operations in japanese Ukraine.