tango down! Prigozhin’s famous “troll factory” has been shut down. It’s the Kremlin’s revenge

On the closure of the Russian holding company Patriot Media, . These reports were also confirmed on Sunday by Yevgeny Zubarev, head of the RIA FAN news agency that is part of it. However, Zubarev did not explain the reasons for this decision. In a short video recording, he only stated that the Patriot holding company defended Vladimir Putin against the Russian opposition, including Alexei Navalny.

The newspaper “Nevskie Novosti”, which was based in St. Petersburg, and is part of the Patriot Media holding, also ceased its activity.

Since we are unable to continue operating on the Russian Internet or fulfill our obligations to partners and advertisers, I and the management of the Patriot group have made the decision to stop publication effective June 30

– said the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Andrei Krasnobayev in an interview with Radio Free Europe.

Earlier, the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor blocked the media belonging to the media empire of Yevgeny Prigozhin. It was a reaction to the mutiny in the branches of the Wagner Group.

Recall that on the night of June 23-24, Prigozhin announced that his mercenaries had been attacked by Russian forces. “The next step is up to us,” he announced. Then the mercenaries began to head towards Moscow. Finally, on Saturday, June 24, in the evening, a recording was published in the social media of the Wagner group, in which Prigozhin’s voice can be heard.

We turn the columns and leave

– said the head of the Wagner group, thus ending the one-day rebellion.

Initially, it seemed that the Patriot holding taken away from Prigozhin would end up in the hands of businessman Yuri Kovalchuk, considered a close friend of Vladimir Putin. Ultimately, however, the Kremlin decided to close it completely.

The end of the famous “troll factory”. She was the one who got the Americans in

The closure of the Patriot Media holding means that its Internet Studies Agency, known as the Russian “troll factory”, will also cease to exist. The activity of the organization, founded in 2013, consisted in setting up thousands of fake accounts in social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and then mass-producing entries and comments praising the government of Vladimir Putin, and at the same time attacking e.g. the Russian opposition.

It is worth adding that the “troll factory” did not focus only on activities on the Russian Internet. “Putin’s trolls” spread their lying narrative, among others in Ukraine and Poland. The organization was also accused of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.

For this reason, in 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on Patriot Media, a holding company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin. In turn, in 2021, the FBI placed “Putin’s cook” on the wanted list in connection with suspicion of conspiracy against the US.

We interfered [w wybory w USA – red.], we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, with surgical precision and in our own way, as only we can

Of course, Prigozhin’s “troll factory” is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations working on behalf of the Kremlin that specialize in spreading disinformation on social media.