When the employees of the famous “troll factory” in St. Petersburg return to their desks after the Russian holidays, they will be writing comments and posts on social media in much more spacious offices, the Euromaidan Press reported.
As the city’s leading business daily Delovoy Peterburg reports in an investigative article published just before New Year, the 4,000 square meters of their previous address on 55, Savushkina Street have been replaced by 12,000 square meters in St Petersburg’s Lakhta business district, according to the Euromaidan Press.
The impressive threefold increase of workspace is a testimony to the success of the “factory”. As Russian RBC Daily’s investigation in April 2017 showed, the trolling activities have now branched out into a conglomerate of at least 16 different online outlets, all of which voice strong support for Kremlin’s policies, while systematically linking to each other’s products. At the same time, they carry little or no advertisement.
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The infamous Russian troll factory also known as Internet Research Agency (IRA) has been reportedly run by Putin’s ally Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Russian city of Saint-Petersburg. For years, the agency has been pushing pro-Russian narratives to promote the Kremlin’s interests in the world attempting to influence domestic policy and public opinion in the EU, U.S., Ukraine, and other countries, or just supporting opposite extreme opinions to sow chaos in target countries.
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