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The chief of Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, admitted on Tuesday he had created the infamous troll farm accused by Western governments of fomenting discord and interfering in elections.
On Tuesday, Prigozhin said for the first time that the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg was his brainchild. “I thought it up, I created it, and I managed it for a long time,” he said in a statement. “It was created to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of the West’s anti-Russian talking points.”
On the eve of the US midterm vote last November, Prigozhin admitted to trying to change the outcome of US elections.
The “Troll Farm” was fingered in the 2016 U.S. elections as an active actor, putting out political propaganda and disinformation.
Donald Trump, who won that 2016 presidential election, has always strongly denied that Russia, or Russians, assisted his political campaign.
In 2018, U.S. special investigator Robert Mueller indicted persons connected to the St. Petersburg web operation.
