Prigogine troll factory. A former employee of the so-called "troll factory" spoke about the scheme of its work

The organization of Internet trolling in Russia is a deeply confusing and conspiratorial business, despite the fact that thousands of people are drawn into its orbit. Petersburg and Moscow, in notorious mansion in Olgino young people do not look up from the keyboard, scribbling laudatory publications about Putin and Sobyanin, scolding Navalny and the United States and generally forming the necessary picture of the world. Organizational and financial support of this activity, as it is considered, is carried out by a PR technologist, previously convicted favorite restaurateur of Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who traditionally denies the relevant information. Perhaps the connection of this cook with a number of "Internet research" companies will be proven in the course of a lawsuit initiated by a former employee of the "troll kitchen".

As it became known to Kommersant, on June 1, the Petrograd Court of St. Petersburg will begin considering the lawsuit of a former employee of the so-called Internet troll factory against employers. Lyudmila Savchuk was, she said, fired without a final settlement from the Internet Research Company, which appears in a number of journalistic investigations as one of the main suppliers of paid political commentators on blogs. St. Petersburg human rights activists representing the interests of Mrs. Savchuk do not hide the fact that the main goal of the proceedings is to bring the company's activities and its management to the public field. According to a 34-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, she was initially interested in an ad on a job site, which offered her to write comments and posts on the Internet on a given topic. She came to get a job in December 2014, before the New Year holidays. By that time, reports about the Internet Research company had already been published in various media.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the director of the company is Mikhail Bystrov . According to media reports, another company with the consonant name is associated with the Internet Research firm. Internet Research Agency". In early May, this company was merged with the New Technologies company, which, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is engaged in construction work. “The Troll Factory exists according to very strange schemes, but all these firms are interconnected, although they are different legal entities,” says Ms. Savchuk.

According to her, when she came to the interview, she was convinced that the newspapers did not lie about the service. paid political commentators. Having removed a photocopy from her passport, a briefing was given to the new employee. “The work was in shifts, the shift was 12 hours. All employees had to write a certain number of posts and comments on various sites,” Ms. Savchuk said in her statement of claim. The plaintiff worked in the special projects department. The unit's tasks included writing at least five political posts on topics that were sent out at the beginning of each week. The salary was 41 thousand rubles. According to Mrs. Savchuk, she was not formalized, and the salary was paid in cash. She was fired in March of this year. The management told the employee that she violated the terms of the contract, which forbids discussing the company's activities with third parties. “I talked to journalists who kept finding out what kind of company it was, and in the end I was fired. Moreover, I did not see any order or any other papers,” said Mrs. Savchuk.

The absence of an official employment contract and a dismissal order became the reason for filing a lawsuit with the Petrograd court. In addition, Ms. Savchuk demands to pay her wages for February and compensate for moral damages. The interests of the former employee of the "troll factory" are represented by human rights activists from the St. Petersburg organization Team-29, which advocates free access to information.

Lyudmila Savchuk herself, after her dismissal, decided to found a movement "

According to the publication, the reason why Mikhailov spoke to the media and decided to talk about the work of the structure was the events of 2017, when unknown people took him to the forest, beat him, forced him to rewrite his share in the business and give a receipt for 3 million rubles. Mikhailov claims that the kidnappers were led by a lawyer he knew from his joint work with Prigozhin.

Mikhailov said:

In 2012, an acquaintance brought Mikhailov together with the head of Prigozhin’s security service, Yevgeny Gulyaev, who allegedly offered to organize a provocation against the owner’s competitor, the head of the Caramel Catering company, Kirill Ziminov, who received a contract to service the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Mikhailov agreed and, in order to disrupt Ziminov's contract, organized a staged food poisoning at a buffet served by Caramel.

After this event, Mikhailov was introduced to Prigozhin, he was supposed to oversee the project of publishing fake news in the media for money. The businessman allocated one and a half million rubles for this, but in the end he was dissatisfied with the execution and everything was closed. Mikhailov worked for the entrepreneur until the end of 2013.

About the troll factory*:

According to Mikhailov, the idea to organize a company of trolls came to Prigozhin in 2013, he also chose the building for rent.

The "factory" initially employed 200 people, but they did it inefficiently. The main burden fell on a team of professionals, of which there were 10 people in the company. The trolls were instructed to "dump information into blogs", "search for negative information on the network using keywords."

Mikhailov spoke in detail about the provocations under his leadership against AiF, Dmitry Bykov, Forbes, MIA Rossiya Segodnya, described an action plan for "interrupting" food contracts in Samara hospitals when the "trolls" recorded fake videos about cockroaches in a medical institution and organized staged pickets. He also confirmed the fact in Sochi by order of Prigogine.

* "Troll Factory", "Kremlebots" or "Olga trolls" is the name of the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency, which manipulates public opinion through publications on the net. Prigozhin denies involvement in the organization of the company.

With Andrei Mikhailov, one of the founders of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s media holding, which included a media network and a “troll factory”. Mikhailov spoke about the work of this structure, information attacks and the organization of attacks on Prigozhin's competitors. Rain chose the main thing from the interview.

Why did you decide to give an interview?

According to Mikhailov, in May 2017, several men took him to the forest, beat him, forced him to write a receipt for three million rubles and rewrite his share in the business. The group of kidnappers was led by a lawyer whom Mikhailov met while working for Prigozhin. Mikhailov said he did not want "the trip to go unpunished."

Acquaintance with Prigogine

Mikhailov began working for Prigozhin's people in 2012. He met Yevgeny Gulyaev, the head of the businessman's security service, and agreed to work - on assignment, he had to organize a provocation against Prigozhin's competitor, the head of Karamal Catering, Kirill Ziminov. His firm received a contract to service the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and, according to Mikhailov, it had to be “broken down”. Mikhailov organized a buffet, and Concorde security officers staged food poisoning.

Mikhailov was introduced to Prigozhin himself in late summer or early autumn 2012. He presented the businessman with the Newspaper About Newspapers project, in which it was necessary to get the media to publish “non-existent information” for money. Prigozhin was pleased and, according to Mikhailov, “gave cash from the safe for four numbers — a million and a half rubles,” but “after the release of three numbers, he began to yell that everyone had failed.”

Mikhailov said that all actions were coordinated with Prigozhin. If he agreed, he stamped “Agreed” on the documents and issued the money either himself or through the accounting department.

At the end of 2013, the interlocutor of the newspaper was "suspended from work."

Creation of a "troll factory"

According to Mikhailov, the idea belonged to Prigozhin, who also picked up the building. This structure was not called the "Troll Factory" - it was invented by the media.

Mikhailov is sure that Prigozhin "did not receive instructions from anyone, did not consult with anyone and did not ask permission."

2013, he said, was “very active” with the “troll factory” tasked with, for example, “dumping information on blogs” and “search for negative information on the web using keywords.”

At that time, the “troll factory” “worked closely” with businessman Igor Ashmanov, as his Kribrum social media monitoring system was introduced into work.

At the same time, Mikhailov claims that “in reality, the trolls worked inefficiently.” “I had another team operating in parallel, a team of professionals – there were ten of them – which covered this entire structure,” he said. Mikhailov refused to give the names of these people.

"Dismissal" of the editor-in-chief of RIA Novosti Svetlana Mironyuk

Mikhailov said that Yevgeny Gulyaev instructed "to check [the agency] for the purity of the information." Employees of RIA Novosti were offered to publish fictitious news and handed over money, "creating an opinion about venality." All this was hidden on video. In fact, there were no agreements with RIA journalists and they did not take any money. All the people involved in this were hired and trained by Mikhailov himself. They, according to him, were on a salary “to carry out certain activities,” so the entire budget for the attack on RIA was “payment for flights and hotels.”

Reports on the "work" were handed over to the owner of the "troll factory". “I don’t know how Prigozhin used this, these videos didn’t seem to appear on the network. But Mironyuk was removed in December 2013, which means that the task was completed, ”Mikhailov said.

He also told Novaya Gazeta about the participation of Prigozhin’s people in a provocation against Dmitry Bykov, the attack on Sochi blogger Anton Grishchenko, who wrote “something very offensive” about Putin, filming staged videos with cockroaches and unsanitary conditions in hospitals in Samara, where it was necessary " to interrupt contracts" for the supply of products for Prigozhin's Concorde, and about a fake accident due to Prigozhin's "personal resentment" against St. Petersburg businesswoman Elena Cherevko.

Mikhailov handed over to Novaya Gazeta video recordings, correspondence, certificates and other documents that related to his work for Prigozhin.

The St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency is called the "Troll Factory". Its employees distribute publications and comments on social networks to form a certain public opinion, in particular, to support the country's leadership. They are also called "Kremlebots" and "Olga trolls".

Olgino is a historical district of St. Petersburg, where the headquarters of the "troll factory" used to be. In 2017, the organization moved to the Lakhta-2 business center. The Internet Research Agency is associated with Prigozhin, he denies any involvement with him.

In February 2017, he and 12 employees of the "troll factory" were accused of attempting to interfere in the 2016 US elections.

A media holding has appeared in St. Petersburg with an audience of more than 36 million people a month. At first, the editorial offices lived at the address of the infamous "troll factory", they have common leaders and, probably, one investor

Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina for RBC

St. Petersburg, July 5, 2016. The Kuibyshevsky District Court, a stone's throw from Nevsky Prospekt, is considering a lawsuit against Yandex from businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Concorde group, which caters for landmark events with the participation of President Vladimir Putin. Using the norms of the law "On Oblivion", the St. Petersburg businessman requires the search engine to remove 22 links to articles devoted to his business - overt and shady - from the search results. Fontanka.ru reported that “men in civilian clothes” and correspondents of the Federal News Agency (FAN) crowded at the doors of the hall: they all rushed to the benches as soon as the court secretary opened the door. Journalists from other media were not allowed into the hall, only a correspondent from the local Kommersant could get inside.

On the eve of the meeting, a man named Yevgeny Zubarev - the same name as the director of the FAN - left a message in the working chat of the journalists of this agency on Skype. As follows from the screenshot of the correspondence (available to RBC), “all the correspondents in St. Petersburg” must come to court half an hour before the start of the process. “[We need] to reduce the number of colleagues entering the room. The task is to prevent the dissemination of information about the titles of articles, links to which the plaintiff wants to remove, ”judging by the screenshot, Zubarev demanded.

The agency’s journalists did not know who those mysterious “men in civilian clothes” were, but they assumed they were employees from Prigozhin’s office, a former FAN correspondent recalls. In a conversation with RBC magazine, Zubarev said that there was only one reporter from the agency and two from FAN-TV at that court session, and refused to comment on "leaks allegedly from work chats." The avatar from the screenshot matches the photo of Zubarev's Skype account, registered to his personal email.

The special operation was only partially successful: the Kommersant journalist was able to enter the courtroom and write news, and the titles of the articles that Prigozhin wanted to remove from the search engine results were already known from previous sessions. For example, several “objectionable” materials related to the possible participation of a restaurateur in financing the so-called “troll factory” - a St. Petersburg organization whose employees supposedly have to write blog comments in defense of the current government, criticize the opposition, and promote patriotic values.

FAN and some of the portals close to it have been associated with the “troll factory” since its inception: the first editorial offices were located at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg - this building was nicknamed the “troll den” by the media. Now the media group, where the largest is FAN, includes at least 16 online information resources, nine of which are officially registered by Roskomnadzor as mass media, RBC magazine calculated (for more details, see infographic).

There is no parent legal structure for a group of linked sites. But this does not prevent the organization's leadership from using the word "holding" when meeting representatives of the federal media, a participant in one such meeting told RBC magazine. Already, “non-core” areas (accounting, IT, etc.) are common to all editorial offices; the group is really thinking about the need for “legal beauty,” said a source familiar with the work of the “media factory”.

For a long time, the sites of this kind of "patriotic holding" remained on the sidelines of the media space. In December 2015, the total audience of the group's sites barely exceeded 5.5 million users (archival Alexa Rank statistics), by mid-February 2017, about 33 million people visited the same portals. Liveinternet counters show a higher value - over 36 million people, of 11 million of them are FAN readers. It is impossible to see the intersection of the audience of portals within the group - the statistics are closed.

The sites of the "media factory" unanimously bypass the largest Russian information publications on the Internet: the site of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" in the same period was visited by about 33 million people, "RIA Novosti" - by about 28 million (data from Liveinternet). And the average monthly audience of the federal network of urban Internet portals Regional Network (part of the Hearst Shkulev group of companies) is 25 million unique users, according to the official website.

How did the media, once associated with the “troll lair”, manage to bypass the recognized players in the media market? And how successfully do they manage to get rid of the "factory" past?

Photo: Denis Vyshinsky / TASS

factory overcoat

In 2015, American journalist Adrian Chen came to St. Petersburg to collect material for New York Times Magazine - this article, succinctly titled The Agency ("Agency"), subsequently glorified Savushkin, 55 as a "troll factory" to the whole world. In the northern capital, Chen met with Katarina Aistova, who allegedly was related to the Internet Research Agency LLC (one of the legal incarnations of the "troll factory"). She came with a man of athletic build, introducing him as her brother.

After the meeting, the American journalist went to the office center on the street. Savushkina, 55. Chen then found FAN in the list of tenants, called the internal number. Zubarev went down to the journalist and invited him into his office: his colleagues kindly talked, while the head of the publication denied any connection with the “troll factory”, and called himself and the agency “victims of black PR”.

The day after Chen's departure from Russia, FAN published a note that an American journalist met in a St. Petersburg cafe with famous activist far-right parties Alexei Maksimov ("Fly") - it was he, as it turned out, who came to a meeting with Aistova under the guise of her brother. The publication was accompanied by pictures taken in a cafe with a hidden camera.

The FAN website was registered in May 2014, the editorial staff started working in about a month, one of the ex-editors of the publication told RBC magazine. Professional journalists were invited to launch the new media. The first editor-in-chief of the agency was the former top manager of the regional branch of RIA Novosti, Vladislav Kraev (left the "patriotic holding" in 2015), and the director was Zubarev, the former editor of Rosbalt, a nominee for the main award of the St. Petersburg journalistic community "Golden Pen". ".

If the impersonal “troll factory” has always existed “behind the scenes” and was hiding under various legal masks like “Glavset”, “Internet Research Agency” or “Teka”, then FAN immediately headed for work “in the open”. At the end of 2014, the agency received a certificate from Roskomnadzor. The founder of the media was the legal entity of the same name, and three more portals were recorded on it in the register of Roskomnadzor - “Economics Today”, “Federal Agency of Incidents” and “Free Time”. As the actual location of the editorial office, the certificates indicated one address - Savushkina, 55 (archival licenses are stored on Comobzor.ru).

It will no longer be possible to catch Zubarev at Savushkina, 55, as Chen once did - in 2015, the FAN moved from the building famous by the American journalist. No one then explained the reasons for the move to the team, but everyone understood without a word - the proximity to the "trolls" worked for the editors "in the red", says the ex-editor of the agency. Although the organizations sat on different floors and intersected only in the smoking room, the dining room and the accounting department, two former employees of the editorial offices recall.

It was far from necessary to transport computers: an office was rented for media editors in the business center "Ilyich" on the street. Beloostrovskaya, 8 - a few kilometers from the "troll factory". In "Ilyich", in addition to FAN, "Politics Today", "Economy Today" and "People's News" are now working. The Politics Today website is redirected from the portal of the Federal Incident Agency (FAP; fapnews.ru), support for which ceased in December 2016: in English slang, the word fap is used in the meaning of “masturbation”, so no matter how hard the editors try , search engines stubbornly threw FAP news out of the search results, mistaking it for a porn site, Zubarev laughs.

The director of the agency did not meet the RBC correspondent in personal account, and in a small newsroom, which seemed to have been specially vacated for interviews: personal belongings of correspondents were on computer tables, a young man looked into the room during the meeting, but, seeing the boss, slammed the door in fright. Talking about the FAN, Zubarev was clearly proud of achieving a record readability. But he answered sharp questions with averted eyes. "Troll Factory"? FAN has nothing to do with her.” “Why did they sit on Savushkin? It was cheap and convenient."

After part of the editorial office moved to a new office at the "troll factory", a new portion of information portals for the "patriotic holding" began to grow. At the end of 2015, at least five resources appeared on Savushkin - Word and Deed, Politpuzzle, Inforeactor, PolitExpert, Newinform, their total audience now reaches almost 9 million people.

In February 2017, Inforeactor, PolitExpert, Newinform received media certificates from Roskomnadzor, the founder is St. Petersburg Novinfo LLC. The only owner of the company is a certain Yuri Krasnov. When a correspondent for RBC magazine called him, introducing himself as an employee of the supervisory authority, he confirmed that, in fact, three editorial offices of Novinfo were sitting on Savushkin.

Communication with other portals of the media group is indirect, but traceable: the administrator of the VKontakte group of the Slovo i Delo portal communicated with the RBC magazine correspondent from an IP address that, at least until the summer of 2016, was rented by Glavset LLC (one of the legal entities "trolls"). Two Inforeactor employees wrote messages to RBC from the same IP. And about a year ago, the head of Politpuzzle, Vladimir Mezentsev, presented Word and Deed on Instagram as “his brainchild”, the post was accompanied by the words “<...>We came. Gloomy from the fact that our Russia was slandered.

The evidence of Roskomnadzor and the course taken towards civilized work do not yet allow the “patriotic holding” to completely get rid of the “factory” past. None of the 16 portals indicates on its website the address where the editorial office is actually located. So, until the beginning of March, Narodnye Novosti sent all potential guests to a residential building on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. the address on the site was corrected to Krasnogvardeisky lane, 23 - the building next to Ilyich. The editorial office of the FAN is also located there, judging by the information on the portal (as of March 10).

In Ilyich, the editorial offices of the “media factory” rent two floors - about 1 thousand square meters. m, with a separate entrance from the street. Not every security guard of the business center knows where the FAN or its friendly editorial offices are located, and there are no nameplates. As in the case of addresses, the management system of the "patriotic holding" is built according to the best shadow standards.

Development foreman

At dusk, the coffee-red building of Ilyich resembles a typical Scandinavian business center: lamps are lit in the huge, almost panoramic windows of the building, the curtains are open. Dirty and unsightly Beloostrovskaya is flooded with office light, from the street you can watch the life of tenant companies. The windows behind which the FAN works are tightly covered with milky-colored blinds. Only by leaning against the windows, on the ground floor, through the cracks, you can see a small newsroom, a calendar with Vladimir Putin on the wall, and computers with inventory numbers affixed.

Correspondents of RBC magazine could not walk around the office: from what they managed to see from the inside - the same office desks with computers that employees aged 25-30 work at. The media group is managed by several managers at once, but only Zubarev is officially represented on the FAN website. Editions are managed geographically. Ilyich has its own leader, where a team of about 100 people from five media portals of the holding sits. The editorial offices on Savushkina, where about 125-150 employees work from at least six sites, have their own manager.

The hub on Beloostrovskaya is managed by 29-year-old Alexei Nikiforov. Prior to joining the media factory in early 2016, he headed a small company, Spetsstroyproekt, which was engaged, for example, in the manufacture of metal structures for the Bolshevik poultry plant from the Leningrad Region. “I'm tired of construction, there are fewer funds in this area, but more words and promises. I wanted something new, I saw an ad on HeadHunter and responded, ”Nikiforov explains the change of profession to a correspondent for RBC magazine. He does not have public accounts on social networks, and in the picture from the editorial office, which was posted on Instagram by his deputy, Nikiforov covers his face with his hand.

Now he officially represents the holding at business negotiations, although Zubarev is listed as the General Director of Federal News Agency LLC in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The latter disowns administrative work: in a conversation with RBC magazine, he stressed several times that he is responsible only for the content, and all economic issues are on his younger colleague.

The editorial offices working for Savushkin are managed by Oleg Vasiliev, a source familiar with the activities of the “patriotic holding” told RBC magazine. Unlike Nikiforov, before the media sphere, Vasilyev allegedly worked at a “troll factory”: ex-employee of Internet Research LLC Marat Mindyarov in 2015 in an interview with Novaya Gazeta called Vasilyev one of the top managers of the organization.

The same Vasiliev allegedly asked the ex-employee of the "troll factory" Olga Maltseva not to take out into the public space the story of her dismissal without paying pregnancy benefits, the BBC claimed (the agency has a recording of the conversation). Maltseva did not agree to this proposal and filed a lawsuit, but lost in February 2017, follows from the case file. In a conversation with Novaya Gazeta, she recalled that she was fined for being late and laughing at the workplace. A source for RBC magazine, who is familiar with working for Savushkin, confirms that Vasiliev often takes "absurd administrative decisions". It was not possible to communicate with Vasiliev: like Nikiforov, he obviously avoids unnecessary contacts - the phone he used to communicate with Maltseva during the conflict is no longer used.

However, Nikiforov and Vasiliev can hardly be called the main curators of the "media factory" - rather, performers. A former employee of one of the group's media outlets recalls that "key issues had to be resolved with [Mikhail] Burchik." Some of the employees of the “patriotic holding”, to whom RBC magazine asked to talk or comment on this or that fact, reported this to a certain Mikhail Leonidovich - Burchik has the same patronymic.

Burchik, 30, developed his own companies VkAp.ru and GaGaDo, which developed games and applications for both social networks and mobile platforms, Sekret Firmy magazine wrote in 2010. Also, the St. Petersburg IT entrepreneur published newspapers for the Smolninsky and Dvortsovy municipal districts (data from the public procurement website). Burchik told RBC magazine that he does not work for a media holding, but “advises him” as a specialist in the promotion and development of Internet projects. Burchik refused to tell the details of cooperation - as well as answer other questions.

In 2014, the Shaltai-Boltai hacker group published an array of letters exchanged between the management of the “troll factory” (the authenticity of the correspondence was confirmed by Fontanka.ru sources). In one of the files, Burchik was identified as the "executive director" of the Internet Research Agency. In a conversation with Chen, the businessman denied his connection with Savushkina, 55. As indicated in the SPARK-Interfax database, Burchik owns and heads the Commercial News Agency company: a company with a revenue of about 8.5 million rubles. (for 2015) was established at the end of 2013, the main type of activity is the work of news agencies. What exactly the company does, RBC magazine failed to find out.

As the “media factory” grew, St. Petersburg journalists from local media poured into it. Not all of them shared the ideological agenda of the “patriotic holding”, says a former employee of the FAN, but there was no other work. In addition, despite the “limited financial resources”, salaries in the media group for a number of positions are higher than the average market by local standards.

To each according to his work

“Information support activities government agencies, [obscene word],” this is how the editor-in-chief of one of the holding’s portals, who previously worked in the St. Petersburg editorial office of a federal newspaper, describes his activities on Twitter. His media group colleague proudly shows off a three-year U.S. visa on Instagram and writes about her love for Los Angeles on Facebook: during business hours, her publication publishes a translated article entitled “True Lies: How Obama and his loyal aides are fooling the American people.”

The average salary indicated in the vacancies of the St. Petersburg media for the position of correspondents and editors is 43 thousand rubles, a representative of HeadHunter told RBC magazine. FAN is only ready to pay 45 thousand rubles to low-level workers - content managers. Their duty is to rewrite 20-30 notes a day. The salaries of producing editors, who must call experts and prepare, according to Nikiforov's definition, "exclusive materials" - 3-7 daily - amount to about 55 thousand rubles. A little more, 60 thousand rubles, are received by the chief editors. In FAN alone, five people work in this position: they search for topics and correct errors in the texts of subordinates, Zubarev says.

The interlocutor of RBC magazine, who worked in several different publications of the holding, calls the announced amounts “close to real”. “Now people are leaving the FAN because of salaries,” admits the editor-in-chief of a major St. Petersburg newspaper. The editorial offices work in the background, say Nikiforov and Zubarev, the salary project is in the bank "Saint Petersburg". This has happened since the summer of 2016, clarifies the source of the RBC magazine, who is familiar with the leadership of the media group. “Both before and now everything was within the law,” Zubarev insists.

Individual employees receive a "bonus" in the form of their own media: the holding still does not have a single legal entity. For example, Anna Botneva, a former employee of Gazeta.ru and former editor-in-chief of Narodnye Novosti, who left all structures of the group in August 2016, got LLC Federal News Agency. She did not answer the question of the RBC magazine why she is still listed as the owner of the FAN, referring to previously signed non-disclosure documents.

The wife of the editor-in-chief of the FAN and part-time editor-in-chief of the portal Tatyana Stepanova owns Narodnye Novosti LLC, and Elena Vasilyeva is the owner of Economics Today LLC (data from SPARK-Interfax), the full namesake of the chief editor of the publication of the same name. Vasilyeva and Stepanova did not answer RBC magazine's questions about how they suddenly ended up as owners of the media business. “This is not a crime,” Zubarev said when asked about the practice of recording assets on employees.

The maintenance of a media holding with editors-owners costs up to 15 million rubles. per month. This amount also includes the cost of renting in Ilyich, Nikiforov cites figures. A source of RBC magazine, close to the management of the group, voices a large amount - 20-22 million rubles. monthly. Thus, the work of the "media factory" with a staff of 225-250 people costs from 180 to 264 million rubles. in year.

The second figure is closer to reality, judging by the expenses of the St. Petersburg JSC AJUR-Media (the largest asset is Fontanka.ru). In 2015, the group spent 113 million rubles on the maintenance of 80 employees and office expenses, follows from SPARK-Interfax. In 2016, spending grew a little - up to 120 million rubles, says an interlocutor in one of the local publications, familiar with the work of AJUR-Media.

However, in the "patriotic holding" they do not focus on local media, not considering them competitors. “We are working on the federal agenda. Our goal is to be like RIA Novosti, TASS, RBC or RT,” says Nikiforov. Of the 16 resources of the “media factory”, only Nevskiye Novosti is currently “closing” the local agenda. Several portals at once - "Politics Today", "PolitExpert", "Word and Deed", "Politpuzzle", "Journalistic Truth" - cover geopolitical conflicts, confrontation between Russia and the West, and the sites "News Agency of Kharkov", "KyivSMI" - events in Ukraine. Ekonomika Segodnya is positioned in the holding as a business publication, and PolitRussia does not shy away from news like “Nastya Zadorozhnaya posted a photo without underwear.” However, FAN groped for an exclusive agenda.

In the line of fire

July 2016, Turkey's southeastern province of Hakkari. The Kurdish People's Self-Defense Units and the regular Turkish army are fighting fierce battles. In the distance is the mountain camp of the Kurds: in it, on a narrow mountain range, in rock shelves, in sleeping bags, FAN correspondents Kirill Romanovsky and Vyacheslav Druzhinin spend the night. One of the nights there was shelling: Romanovsky jumped up abruptly and the backpack lying at his feet flew down from the cliff. “It was impossible to stay, we took off, packing as fast as possible,” Romanovsky recalls in a conversation with RBC magazine. On that day, medicines and a hermetic bag with cash NZ, as well as a tripod attached to the side, flew off the cliff along with a backpack.

For the first time, FAN war correspondents went to Syria in 2015, even before the start of the Russian VKS operation. The model of working in hot spots was tested earlier in Ukraine: the portals of the media holding covered fighting on the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, including by the forces of their own correspondents. In 2015, Nevsky News reporter Andrei Zakharchuk was even detained in Nikolaev by SBU officers, but he was included in the prisoner exchange program and returned to St. Petersburg.

In Syria, FAN members work in shifts - in teams of two people. The business trip lasts about one and a half to two months, after which the journalists are involved in Russia for a month and a half, says Romanovsky. He studied at the University of Berlin, worked as a reporter from the warring Donbass for the FAN and the Journalistic Truth portal established by the agency. Until the beginning of 2016, three pairs of journalists worked on the military theme, now there are two of them. The cost of a monthly stay of correspondents in the combat zone is $1,500, excluding the cost of the flight, says Romanovsky. One trip to Syria brings the journalist 75-150 thousand rubles, a source familiar with the management of the holding told RBC magazine.

Since the beginning of coverage of the Syrian events, FAN military correspondents have received accreditation through the local Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Defense. After the appearance of the Russian military, journalists continued to work through the Syrian authorities: according to Romanovsky, they contact the press service of the Russian Defense Ministry only "periodically". “For those who receive accreditation in Khmeimim (air base of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria. — RBC) the Russian military, in principle, do not show anything. They are under the round-the-clock supervision of our contingent and it’s simply impossible to shoot something worthy, ”said Dmitry Zhavoronkov, a former military commander of the FAN, in an interview with well-known military blogger Anatoly Nesmiyan (El Murid) in February 2017. Zhavoronkov himself refused to discuss his work in Syria with RBC.

Of all the Russian media operating in the hottest spot on the planet, FAN really has the least contact with the command of the Russian armed forces, Romanovsky admits. However, you have to pay for such independence: correspondents of the publication get to Syria on their own, and not by transport of the Ministry of Defense. First - to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, then by bus or taxi to Damascus.

In the war zone, the agency's teams are accompanied by an interpreter and guide, usually the same person. In particular, retired Syrian general Sami Shikha, who received a military education in the USSR and knows Russian well, provides such services to FAN journalists, a military commander familiar with the methods of the agency's work in Syria told RBC. Shikh's military past helps journalists, since a civilian specialist would have been turned away at the very first checkpoint, the source of the RBC magazine claims. Shikha communicates with FAN journalists not only at the theater of operations, but also, for example, comments on their photos on Facebook. Those in response call him "dear general."

Independence from the Russian military department allows FAN military commissars to get ahead of colleagues from other media. “Correspondents of FAN and ANNA-News (a news portal covering events in Ukraine and Syria; not associated with a “patriotic holding.” — RBC) - real "thugs". They climb into the thick of it, ”says an interlocutor of RBC magazine, close to the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties. For example, FAN journalists entered the re-liberated Palmyra together with the assault detachments of the Syrian army: on the morning of March 3, 2017, the agency was the first Russian media to publish a video report by Romanovsky and his partner Roman Martynovich about the capture of the citadel - an ancient fortress in the city center. On the website of the Vesti TV channel, the report of the military commander Yevgeny Poddubny appeared only in the evening of the same day.

One of the reasons for the successful work of FAN correspondents in Syria is the help of the so-called private military company (PMC) Wagner, a source close to the Center for Reconciliation of the Parties is sure. “Yes, PMC connections were used,” confirmed the military commander, who is closely acquainted with the journalists of the “patriotic holding”. PMC fighters under the command of Dmitry Utkin (Wagner) took part in the first assault on Palmyra in the spring of 2016, RBC magazine wrote earlier. Firms related to the businessman served the base in Molkino (a training base, including for Wagner fighters). And according to Fontanka.ru, Wagner moved around Russia for two years in the company of people from Prigozhin's entourage.

When asked about help from PMC Wagner, Romanovsky replied that he had never seen its fighters in four business trips. Now they really are not there, an interlocutor close to the Center for Reconciliation of the Parties told RBC. “They [Wagner PMCs] were withdrawn in the autumn,” confirmed a source familiar with the details of the work of this PMC in Syria. Both interlocutors of RBC magazine claim that other Russian PMCs are now operating in the region that have nothing to do with Wagner as a commander. The presence of unofficial units in Syria is confirmed by data from the Conflict Intelligence Team: in March, a research group of at least nine Russian fighters who died in 2017.

Whoever helped the FAN, constant news and regular online broadcasts, equipped with videos from the front line, as well as summaries of Syrian events six times a day, reminiscent of the army, have borne fruit: for example, the query "Syria news" in the search results of "Yandex" in the beginning of March the site of the St. Petersburg agency appeared in the first place. Nikiforov explains that the media outlets reporting to him actively use SEO technologies, optimizing news for keywords and adjusting to user requests.

True, the share of such traffic on average for all portals of the “media factory” barely exceeds 8.5% of the total traffic, Similarweb statistics for February show. The same FAN has about 4% at all: in the top five most popular keywords are the combinations “news of Ukraine”, “news of Novorossia”, “Syria”. A much greater effect than working with search engines, media group portals gives cooperation with leading teaser (exchange) networks and partnerships with federal publications. The exchange of links with the “feds” allowed several portals of the “patriotic holding” to soar in the citation rating of Medialogy. And "teasers" now bring almost half of the entire audience to the holding's sites.

Yeast of rapid growth

On March 7, 2017, the Ural portal Ura.ru posted the news that scientists from the United States and China found out which color taxi is the most dangerous to get into. In the second paragraph of the note, the author put a hyperlink to the message of "People's News", in the third - to the FAN. On the same day, Gazeta.ru reported on a Wall Street Journal article about Donald Trump's toughening policy towards Russia, adding inside a link to the FAN article, and not to the original publication of the American publication.

Portals inside the "media factory" generously exchange news with each other, thereby increasing the "visibility" of the text in the information space and popularizing each other among readers. However, this type of cooperation is not taken into account in the citation rating of Medialogia, where the FAN burst as quickly as it entered the ranks of the most widely read media in the country.

FAN was added to the monitoring system in August 2016 as a news agency, Nadezhda Zhukovskaya, a representative of Medialogy, told RBC magazine. At the end of the year, the St. Petersburg media with federal ambitions took seventh place, leaving behind, for example, Regnum news agency. At the same time, the breakthrough occurred in the period from October to December - during this time, the citation index of the main resource of the "patriotic holding" jumped almost six times, it follows from the data of the Media monitoring system, which RBC managed to get acquainted with with the help of one of Medialogy's partners .

Some federal media especially zealously took up cooperation with the St. Petersburg edition. For example, in December, the leader in FAN citation was Gazeta.ru (about 33% of the total citation index for the month), Izvestia and the National News Service (NSN), respectively, were in second and third with an indicator of about 15%, next is the portal Ura.ru (about 5%). Only on March 2, Gazeta.ru published 24 materials with reference to the FAN, on March 3 - 25, RBC magazine calculated. On March 8-10, NSN posted ten news from the agency daily. In turn, the FAN and its resources generously publish the news of their colleagues: for example, about six NSN notes appear on the portal every day.

To increase the citation index, FAN proposes federal media exchange links to materials, an interlocutor in a large media company told RBC. “Some even complained that they were doing it too aggressively,” he says. The correspondent of RBC received such an offer from Nikiforov after the interview. FAN and RBC could cooperate in promoting their own exclusive materials, paying "a little more attention" to each other's news feeds, one of the leaders of the "media factory" outlined the essence of the joint work.

The heads of the media, seen in the active exchange of links with the FAN, were in no hurry to answer the questions of the RBC magazine about the partnership. The editor-in-chief of Ura.ru, Ivan Nekrasov, eventually admitted that his portal and the FAN indeed mutually quote each other, cooperation began in December 2016. The decision, according to him, was due to the behavior of federal publications that publish information from Ura.ru without reference to the first

The building of the "factory of trolls" on Savushkina in St. Petersburg

With new fury, the media, quite loyal to the Kremlin, began to expose the "troll factory" of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

If earlier this was done by Novaya Gazeta and some Navalny, now the RBC holding, bought from Prokhorov by a loyal businessman Grigory Berezkin, has seized on Prigozhin and, in a friendly choir with the FBI, CIA and American special services, is tearing apart the well-deserved "troll factory" that contributed its contribution to Trump's election victory. It turns out that the pro-Kremlin RBC reveals a state secret...

Russian media and compromising sites unanimously posted a giant leak, published in RBC and masquerading as the RBC newspaper's own investigation about Prigozhin and the kitchen of the "troll factory".

The title literally reads: "How the St. Petersburg Troll Factory Tried to Influence the Outcome of the US Presidential Election."

What did Yevgeny Prigozhin do if they started tearing him apart?

"The Charlotte event was promoted on Facebook on behalf of the BlackMattersUS community, which has nothing to do with Black Lives Matters. The organization's roots go far beyond the US - Russia, St. Petersburg, Savushkina street, 55.

This address in the Primorsky district of the city has long become a household name. About three years ago, in a four-story building on the street. Savushkin was moved by several hundred people whose main task is to promote patriotic values. The work of the employees of the “Troll Factory” (hereinafter referred to as the “Factory”), allegedly created and sponsored by St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, was reduced to writing non-stop comments under fictitious names on blogs and social networks in Runet - in defense of the current government, criticizing the opposition and support for politically pleasing public events.

Soon the "Factory" began to outgrow its originally primitive methods of work. Around that time, the first portals appeared, which later became the core of the media part of the organization - the so-called "Media Factory", a whole patriotic holding, which RBC magazine wrote about in March 2017 and whose audience now exceeds 50 million people a month. After the publication about the Media Factory, the main media of the holding, the Federal News Agency (FAN), registered the Fabricmedia.ru portal, follows from the data of the WhoIs service.

By mid-2015, the "Factory" had grown to 800-900 people, the arsenal of tools had also expanded - videos, infographics, memes, reports, news, interviews, analytical materials and their own communities were used. And already in January 2017, together with the RT TV channel "Internet Research Agency", one of the first supposed legal entities of the "Troll Factory" (ceased to operate in 2015; at the end of 2016 excluded from the register), were mentioned in the report of American intelligence agencies about Russian interference in the US presidential election. And shortly after the election of Donald Trump, several committees in Congress and the Senate were set up to investigate the incident.

American corporations - Facebook, Twitter, Google - are cooperating with the authorities, looking for traces of "trolls" on their sites. Western media - The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, The Daily Beast and others - almost daily publish new facts about possible Russian interference in the presidential campaign: they find new communities that worked before and after the election, announcements and events related to them. The articles are even based on individual illustrations and videos related to blocked communities.

Evgeny Prigozhin

RBC magazine conducted its own investigation: we managed to find and confirm the involvement of employees from Savushkino in at least 120 communities and thematic accounts, analyze their content and calculate the total costs of the campaign. Is the scale of the work of the "Troll Factory" abroad commensurate with the excitement caused in the United States around this story?" - this is how this leak begins in RBC.

In the so-called RBC investigation, names, surnames, appearances, shares of the "factory" for several years, special attention is paid to the cost of employees' salaries.

Such attention to the financial aspect of the activities of Prigozhin's media empire involuntarily betrays the interest of whistleblowers - to intercept cash flows and take the place of the "Kremlin cook" in the hierarchy of those financed from the budgets and their nooks and crannies.

Undoubtedly, this publication has a customer.

Who is he? Perhaps Grigory Berezkin himself, who bought the RBC holding with gigantic debts.

You should also turn on your head and understand that the whole story about Prigozhev's trolls, which influenced the outcome of the US elections, is complete nonsense. It's a media bubble. Crap.

Head of the Department of New Media and Communication Theory of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University Ivan Zasursky:

"It doesn't matter how much money you invest in it, but Donald Trump is an American, and the Americans voted for him. All the versions that are being investigated now are a little bit in the vein of such a media bubble, a media event, and at the same time everything becomes questionable: and that that the machines were somehow wrongly considered, maybe they hacked, and the fact that there were some kind of campaigns in some especially important states, and the fact that the Russians were here, participated here. there is a certain problem with the way America perceives itself, and for many in the US it is much easier to accept the fact that they were beaten by the treacherous Russians than to admit that most Americans wanted Trump. Because for many people his victory is a really terrible blow." .

Political scientist Ekaterina Shulman has no doubts about the existence of the Russian troll factory and its million-dollar budgets, but the results of their interference in American politics also do not seem significant to her:

“Whether they managed to influence is a somewhat metaphysical question, since the matter of influence is little understood. Looking from Russia, it’s hard to believe that even with a budget of 100 thousand dollars, even with a budget of 2 million dollars, by publishing fake or not fake news, inflating up to the gigantic size of some genuine micro-news or some other methods, you can really significantly influence, that is, decide the outcome of elections in a country like the United States.

So there is a clear order. Who and why?