Антихристанские тролли-провокаторы
We are offering an analytical article about trolls from a secular publication: “Where Trolls Live. How Internet Provocateurs Work in St. Petersburg and Who Runs Them.” In the course of the Ukrainian European Revolution of 2013‑14, a great deal of information surfaced and continues to surface. We hope that the new authorities in Kyiv will stop financing the anti‑sectarian and anti‑Christian projects from Yanukovych’s time, repent and lustrate them, naming the trolls.
On the internet, there are paid anti‑Christian troll‑provocateurs and groups of their followers. The main goal of such trolls is to bring confusion to souls, disbelief in the Gospel, to make it impossible in any way to receive instruction in a righteous life, and ultimately to cause a person to lose faith in God and in His Son Jesus Christ.
An example of such a troll is the Zhytomyr exposer Alexander Sinitsky. A former bandit, drug addict, head of criminal gangs in Zhytomyr, who organized 300 brawls in which his bandits almost all perished, today has become a “church exposer” on YouTube and the internet. In the early 1990s he was imprisoned for a particularly grave crime and was humiliated by inmates in Butyrka prison in Moscow; after 6–8 months of investigation he was released for a bribe of 1,000 dollars. He practically had no income from trading knitwear at the market and in 2009, at the suggestion of his handlers, he undertook trolling of believers. On October 25, 2009, he opened more than 40 video channels, right down to real‑estate websites in small American towns. To back him up, obvious trolls were thrown in, and even the disgraced former Bishop Syrkin, in order to sustain Sinitsky’s anti‑sectarian hysteria.
Where Trolls Live. How Internet Provocateurs Work in St. Petersburg and Who Runs Them
In St. Petersburg and Moscow, in specially equipped offices, internet trolls are at work praising Sergey Sobyanin and Vladimir Putin, attacking Alexei Navalny and America, and defending Syria. A correspondent for Novaya went to the trolls for an interview and found out that in St. Petersburg they are run by one of the former organizers of Seliger and actress Maria Kuprashevich (she never lets up), who at one point infiltrated Russian media outlets, including Novaya, with the goal of discrediting them.
“Internet operators wanted!
Work in a great office in OLGINO!!!! (metro Staraya Derevnya), salary 25,960 per month.
The task: posting comments on specialized internet sites, writing thematic posts, blogs, social networks.
Reporting by screenshots.
Work schedule is set individually.
Weekly pay, 1,180 per shift (from 8:00 to 16:00, from 10:30 to 18:30, from 14:00 to 22:00).
WEEKLY PAYMENTS AND FREE MEALS!!!
Official employment or by contract (your choice).
Training is possible!”
This advertisement appeared on social media at the end of August.
On approach
A fifteen‑minute ride from the Staraya Derevnya metro station, opposite the Olgino railway station. A huge, snow‑white cottage. A guard, a secretary, and rooms with signs: “Blogger and Commentator Management,” “Rapid Response Department,” “SEO Department,” “Journalists,” “Creative Department,” “Commentator Department,” “Blogger Department,” “Social Network Specialist Department.” On the third floor are management offices and a conference hall.
By the order “On Disciplinary Clarifications,” addressed to employees of the Internet Research Agency LLC, for example, “close personal contacts on the territory of the business complex” are forbidden. A separate note for the office manager: “do not hang anything on the windows without approval from administrator Oksana.” According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the organization was registered on July 26, 2013. The founder is Mikhail Kurkin, the general director – Nikolai Chumakov.
My friend and I are met by Alexey Soskovets, a figure from the youth political scene. In his VKontakte “friends” list there are many activists from the Nashi movement, the Young Guard of United Russia, and employees of St. Petersburg’s Committee for Youth Policy, including the former head of the committee Nikita Alexandrov.
In 2013, the “North‑West Service Agency” owned by Soskovets won 18 tenders for organizing holidays, forums and sports competitions for St. Petersburg’s government bodies. In half of the tenders the agency participated as the sole bidder. In the summer of 2013 it won the tender for the transportation of Seliger camp participants.
Workload – 100 comments a day
While we filled out the forms, Alexey described our tasks. According to him, they are now engaged in boosting the index of certain articles. “There are different kinds of articles – social, business, political, and the like. We follow the principle of Yandex.Market,” he began. “Yandex.Market is a huge online store that tells you where to buy better. Under each product there are comments from people saying that this phone is excellent, that phone is bad. Alas, the realities of life are such that people don’t always want to be the first to write comments. We need to increase site traffic. This can be done with bots, but bots do their work mechanically, and sometimes systems like Yandex ban them. Therefore it was decided to do it with people. You write a comment as yourself, with a direction we indicate. For example, about the G‑20 you could write that it is very honorable for Russia, but it’s inconvenient for me to get home.”
I ask whether I, as a troll, am expected to enter into discussions. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but you shouldn’t start a polemic, because people on the other end want to chat, and for you it’s your working hours. You replied with six lines, then one, and that’s it,” Alexey explains. “We’ll send you all the sites and links to the articles you should follow. The norm is to write about 100 comments a day.”
When asked what the topics will be after the G-20, he answers uncertainly: “There will be orders. We don’t know yet. There are many events in the political and business spheres, we’ll do whatever they say.”
The conversation reveals that “the management” promised: this whole setup will last until New Year’s, and then they want to turn the agency into a business project. “We’re hiring people now, operating in several cities—Moscow, St. Petersburg,” Alexei clarifies. He says they have nothing to do with the Nashi movement, but doesn’t rule out that something similar might happen.
Suddenly he asks what we think of Navalny and Sobyanin? We put on indifferent faces.
— Have you been to Seliger?
From bad to worse.
— I took people to Seliger for several years. I know Yakemenko, for better or worse. Here in St. Petersburg, I know many people. When Nikita Alexandrov was appointed head of the youth committee, I laughed a lot. He was running around as an activist when I was organizing Seliger. And then—bam—I get a call from Smolny saying your buddy became the committee chairman.
The Unmaskers
We passed the interview successfully, they demand copies of our passports, because the landlords are supposedly tough guys, and without them we won’t be allowed in. The next day we arrive fully convinced that we’ve been exposed, the operation has failed—after all, a couple of mouse clicks would trace back to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent. However, Soskovets cheerfully shows us to our workstations—we have to write two posts about the Education Law in two hours. Two thousand characters each. We write.
On the desktops there are screenshots of the predecessors’ work, bashing America and Navalny. They say that in the States it’s cramped (because of the skyscrapers), people are boorish and greedy, and films are soulless, while our cinema, on the contrary, is rising from its knees. A hundred comments consist of nothing but clichés and stereotypes. On the desktop of a colleague from the newspaper “My District,” who also infiltrated the “troll lair,” there are screenshots exposing Forbes magazine.
Recall that this spring Forbes found itself at the center of a scandal when it published an interview with businessman Sergei Solovyov as an advertisement. Then in “Newspaper about Newspapers,” where Maria Mayorova (the former employer of Maria Kuprashevich) serves as editor-in-chief, they published an article accusing Forbes of publishing paid-for content. This coincided with massive DDoS attacks on some media outlets. Forbes had to fend off not only those attacks but also numerous internet users who accused the publication of selling out. And here before our eyes—on the computer desktop—are all those posts from “outraged” citizens. The only strange thing is that LLC “Internet Research Agency” was registered at the end of July, while the trolls attacked Forbes in the spring. Was the firm renamed or did it operate without registration?
Is That the Same Maria?
They entrust us with nothing serious so far—after all, we’re newbies. Only the G-20 and the Education Law. They explain that recently an oppositionist infiltrated the office, and now because of her a “quarantine” has been imposed.
A tall blonde enters the room. She asks those present if everything is all right. She is the spitting image of “Masha Hari”—actress Maria Kuprashevich, who took jobs at liberal media outlets for spying purposes. She surfaced in Novaya Gazeta, Moskovsky Komsomolets, and the St. Petersburg online newspaper Fontanka.ru. The colleague from “My District” also recognized the blonde as Masha Kuprashevich. We find her on VKontakte, write: supposedly, we work together, want to be friends. A strange correspondence begins:
Alexandra: I saw you at the internet research agency in Olgino, where I came to apply for a job. You asked us there if the conditions were fine and everything was okay? You were wearing a blue dress.
Maria: I don’t remember you. And why did you decide I work there?
Alexandra: Well, you came over and asked the staff if everything was okay, whether the computers worked well, etc.
Maria: ?**???????????????
She didn’t answer us after that.
In Maria’s friends we find a certain Elena Kupriyanova—she is mentioned in the troll job advertisement, along with her phone number. (By the way, all the ads and phone numbers on Kupriyanova’s page were removed from the internet after the publication in “My District.”)
In the evening Alexei Soskovets wrote on VKontakte: “Good afternoon, Alexandra. Glad to see you.” I replied:
— We were very surprised to see Maria Kuprashevich in your office.
Alexei did not deny “Masha Hari’s” involvement in the project; he simply chose not to contact us further.
“We Don’t Do That Kind of Crap!”
We contacted Nadezhda Orlova, deputy chair of the youth policy committee of St. Petersburg: aren’t you the ones commissioning fake posts about the G-20 and so on?
Orlova (by the way, she is listed as a friend of Soskovets on VKontakte) boiled over: “Soskovets is our contractor, he won our tenders and is now submitting documentation, but we didn’t know what else he does. Trolling is awful! Through his activities he undermines trust in social networks. We don’t do that kind of crap.”
We sent a correspondent to Olgino for an official comment from the troll factory. The girl at the counter rattled off: “Give me your passport, I’ll scan it. Leave your outerwear, bag, and mobile phone here.” After a while, a young man joined her. When it turned out that the correspondent works for Novaya Gazeta, a long pause followed. “Then this isn’t for me,” the guy forced out. The girl insisted that she still needed to scan the passport.
It soon became clear that there was no management and there wouldn’t be; we could leave a phone number—they would call back on Monday.
— Who will call me back? What is your manager’s name?
— The management will tell you who they are.
— And all those nasty things written about you—are they true?
— Of course they’re not true, — says the young man, adding that actually in this office he is only responsible for the water cooler.
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