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How did the troll factory media work and what was going on there during the rebellion? Read stories from non-disclosure employees
A week after the failed rebellion of the head of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, which ended in exile to Belarus, one of his St. Petersburg assets, the Patriot media holding, was closed.
For a long time, employees of Prigozhin's media could not talk about the state of affairs in the editorial offices. When applying for a job, they signed a paper on non-disclosure of information.
After the fall of the media empire,
Paper talked to several editorial staff. Read why, when applying to the Patriot, it was necessary to pass a “lie detector”, how reports were made with dummy “victims of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, how Prigozhin personally composed compromising evidence on Beglov and what is happening with the “troll factory” now.
"Fuck you, I need you." How " Prigozhin's Media " Closed
The Patriot media group was established in 2019, it included publications of the already well-known at that time “troll factory” - it appeared in 2013, it was accused of propaganda, misinformation, and in 2018 of interference in the US elections. Yevgeny Prigozhin financed the "trolls" and headed the board of trustees of "Patriot" from the end of 2019 until the end of May 2023, due to his active participation in the war, he
moved to the post of deputy.
Despite the fact that Prigozhin’s “troll factory” itself
included about 400 companies, only 11 media outlets
were officially controlled by Patriot . The websites of most of them were blocked by Roskomnadzor on the morning of June 24, and the editorial offices themselves on Primorsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg were searched.
“In the midst of June 24, what was happening was reminiscent of a film about General Franco or Hitler’s bunker, although I am against Nazism and other shit,”
Vladimir recalls the day of the armed rebellion in an interview with Paper. Yagudaev. - On the one hand, you publish Prigozhin's speeches on social networks, news about him, sympathy for his deeds and position, and on the other hand, the RKN begins to block you severely, to put pressure on the holding's authorities, who want to ignore what is happening. But you continue to look for ways out and, frankly, you are even preparing to go to jail for a short time.
When asked by
Papers about whether the media holding was expecting Prigozhin’s uprising, Vladimir Yagudayev replied that only in the information field “there were all sorts of nuances that indicated” the intensification of the confrontation with the Ministry of
Defense . “For half a day [before the mutiny], my colleague and I discussed that Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin] is very similar to Donald Trump,” says the former Politika Segodnya SMM manager.
Shortly before the rebellion itself, due to the tense atmosphere around the head of PMC Wagner, each edition of the Patriot "had to write 4-5 regular news stories for almost every post about Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin]." The very authorities of the holding were worried about the actions of the owner (this is how the interlocutor of
Paper calls Yevgeny Prigozhin).
Vladimir Yagudaev. Photo: social networks
The following week, media websites continued to be updated, although the blockages were not lifted. Employees, as the interlocutors of Sever.Realii
said , were transferred to a remote location.
The Bell
wrote that Prigozhin’s media assets could come under the control of the National Media Group (it includes, for example, Delovoy Petersburg and Channel 78) of businessman Yuri Kovalchuk, a friend of Vladimir Putin. Telegram channels spread
information that “Prigozhin’s media” would be taken away for 1 ruble by Shkulev’s media holding (owns Fontanka).
However, no one began to buy "toxic" assets. On Friday, June 30, the teams of Nevsky News, RIA FAN, Narodny Novosti, Politics Today and Economics Today, which were part of the Patriot media group, announced their closure.
“I was one of the first to come [to the editorial office after the search]. Others didn't really want to, for obvious reasons. Everything was destroyed: the door jambs were removed. A separate moment of humor - the sweets were taken out and laid out. Not all of the seized equipment was returned. I haven't found a hard drive yet. But I didn’t ask questions,” Yagudayev recalls the situation at Patriot last week.
“We learned about the closure on Friday, a little later than Mash,” the former SMM manager continues. - All week there was a moment of waiting, pulled to the end. I suppose there were conversations with Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin], until he conditionally said: “Fuck you, I need you.” But in principle, everyone assumed in advance, and in the administrative chats they wrote that everything. Tried to find another owner. Not everyone in the media holding supported Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin], some people had the idea to keep part of the editorial board and resell it to some people from St. Petersburg. But there were snags, these are toxic assets. Up to the last, until Friday, there were negotiations.
According to Vladimir Yagudaev, some of the holding's closed resources "could be saved, but, apparently, [the authorities] simply don't have the will."
" They started to arrange in St. Petersburg publications " . Where do Prigozhin's "journalists" go?
Now all editorial offices are actually disbanded, and social networks and media sites are not updated. How the "author's blog" will continue to exist the telegram channel "Politics Today" with 1.5 thousand subscribers - it
was renamed and decided to keep Yagudayev. As he told
"Paper" , it was his personal initiative. He is ideological - he had previously developed Prigozhin's publication and, after the closing of the holding, did not want to "go against his conscience."
On July 4, the return to the information field was announced by Nevsky News, which was part of Prigozhin's Patriot and in the past few years has specialized in criticizing the St. Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov. In the new telegram channel, they presented themselves as an "independent publication" that counts on the financial support of readers.
- Without us in the city, officials will understand that they can do anything, regardless of the opinion of real Petersburgers. <...> So far we do not know how and by what means we will exist without the funding of Yevgeny Prigozhin. <…> We are confident that thanks to your support, including financial support, as is customary in independent media, we will be able to work for the benefit of society,” Nevsky News
said in an appeal to readers.
The head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Journalists of Russia, Dmitry Sherikh, volunteered to help the employees of the “troll factory” with finding work : “The UJR will, if possible, contact the heads of other media outlets to help their dismissed colleagues find employment, as well as provide other information support.” Timofey Shabarshin, the former head of Nevsky News (until 2021), also agreed to accept colleagues.
Vladimir Yagudaev does not know if the Union of Journalists helped his former colleagues, but notes: “Certain editors-in-chief began to arrange for the most interesting employees in St. Petersburg publications. But this is a limited contingent.”
From the media holding itself, employees received a salary for the last month, although some chief editors wanted to achieve additional monetary compensation, “tried to fight and protect the rights of workers.”
— It’s a sin for me to complain, I never counted on the weekend or anything else. I had savings for this period. <...> They take on another job, but it is no longer connected with politics, - says Vladimir Yagudaev, a former Politika Segodnya SMM manager. He worked at the Patriot for three years.
Lie detector tests. In what conditions did Patriot employees work?
For a long time, employees of Prigozhin's media could not talk about the state of affairs in the editorial offices. Everyone was forced to sign a paper on non-disclosure of information. After the fall of the media empire
, Paper, on condition of anonymity, learned from former Patriot employees about security checks and the atmosphere in the teams.
Many employees of RIA FAN, Politika Segodnya, Nevsky Novosti and other publications were tested on a "lie detector" or polygraph. As a journalist who worked at Patriot several years ago told
Paper , such a system was introduced shortly after the opening of the holding, at the end of 2019.
- At that time, the publications moved to Primorsky Prospekt in the Prigozhinsky complex. A floor was allocated for each media outlet, small editorial offices sat together,” says a former employee. - I was not tested on a polygraph, but I heard stories from newcomers. They were taken to a room where security service specialists worked with them and asked questions - as far as I remember, about drugs and about cooperation with the opposition, especially with Navalny.
The fact that Patriot has a polygraph is also confirmed by Vladimir Yagudaev from Politika Segodnya: “A psychiatrist from some former military structures drove a person away on key issues. If there are no radical views, then you will be taken. In some editions, in fact, there is “a huge freedom of speech”, a different spectrum of views, in my opinion. Weed out only a certain category of opposition. Those who support Navalny. And maybe a commie too.”
Sometimes, according to Yagudayev, there were repeated “polygraph runs” for those employees who had worked for more than two years. He does not remember dismissals after such checks.
A journalist who worked in 2022 in Prigozhin’s largest media outlet, RIA FAN, told
Bumaga that during an “interview” on a polygraph, a man who introduced himself as a former employee of the criminal investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs spoke to him: “At some point, there was a clear feeling that that I'm being interrogated."
In addition to the polygraph, according to former Patriot employees, there were other checks. They tried to observe people: “they followed them with electronic passes, through cameras, and all recordings from computer screens were broadcast to the security service.”
Politika Segodnya's SMM manager Vladimir Yagudaev adds: in the last year and a half, the holding's security service paid more attention not to ties with the opposition, but to the presence of relatives from Ukraine among employees.
“Of course, all this was very nervous, it’s not every day that you are treated as a “potential spy,” a journalist who worked at RIA FAN anonymously told
Paper until the end of 2022. - Everything took place in a rough atmosphere of militarism, with terrible ideological pressure and the rhetoric "the truth is behind us." The very work in the office was like a closed "military enterprise". Often, operators with a military background or "Donbass experience" worked. The atmosphere in the editorial office depended on the shift and who was the "boss". I tried not to talk about politics.
At the same time, some of the interlocutors
of Paper believe that the majority of people in the Prigozhin holding were "unprincipled" and "politically uninterested contingent." Often, those who support the opposition or oppose the war in Ukraine also arranged themselves.
Vladimir Yagudaev
SMM-manager "Politicians today"
“People were just typing. This is not a distinctive feature of the "Patriot", this is massively in other media: both in liberal and in state ones. Today here, tomorrow there. The collapse of the holding has become a disaster for many, because they need to look for a new job, to worry.
Employee of the Prigozhin media in 2019-2020
— I have never met zealous Putinists. Basically, these were people who wanted to receive stable money, from which they could not pay taxes, since they were given out in cash. <...> In 2019, we had people who had a normal attitude towards the same Navalny.
RIA FAN employee until the end of 2022
- They were afraid of the opposition in the holding. Their system was once hacked, the base was demolished - this was done by one of the employees, who then fled to Poland. Among the editors of the telegram channels there were two employees who ran Ukrainian channels in parallel.
In the last year, as the interlocutors of
Paper note, there was a strong turnover in Prigozhin's media, and at the beginning of 2023, an entire department was fired at RIA FAN. For what reason is unknown.
Taboo on Joseph Prigogine and a floor for "investigations" about the opposition. What instructions and prohibitions were in the holding
When Patriot first opened, there was a special department in the holding that dealt with custom-made materials about the opposition and sent texts to the entire media network.
- Everything that concerned the opposition was not done by the editors themselves. It was a department on the eighth floor. Only a limited number of people could get on it,” recalls a former employee of one of Prigozhin’s publications.
According to Vladimir Yagudaev, there was a taboo in Politika Segodnya for "maestro" Yevgeny Ponasenkov, who, at the same time, was often invited as an expert for materials on the site.
“He was our favorite. Our editors promoted him in the holding, and the editor-in-chief and I were a little crazy about this. But then he hinted at the physical elimination of Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], one of the high-ranking people of the holding saw this and forbade it,” Yagudayev recalls.
Also, in Prigozhin's media, as the SMM manager says, "there were blocks" on "political scientists who swear at PMCs", on Igor Strelkov, with whom the head of the PMC "Wagner" recently had a conflict, as well as on Evgeny Prigozhin's namesake - producer Joseph Prigogine. “I suppose the owner didn’t really want his last name to be associated with Joseph,” says the interlocutor of
Paper .
According to a journalist who worked at RIA FAN during the war, he often heard off-screen instructions for the heroes of reports from Donbass from the source files of the interview.
- Most of the people who in such stories appeared as "victims" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were dummy, hired people. These characters repeated pre-memorized remarks to themselves, "crushed a tear." The cameraman also spoke with them behind the scenes, instructing them to speak “slow down” or “say this moment again,” says a former employee of RIA FAN.
" Neither you nor I would have thought of that ." How Prigozhin's media clashed with Beglov
A separate task of the "troll factory", as the interlocutor of
" Paper " says , was to come up with topics for criticism of the governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov. At the same time, a journalist who worked in Patriot in 2019 says that at that time, on the contrary, they made news supporting Beglov’s political program.
The active confrontation between Prigozhin and the governor, as journalists have long noticed, began in 2021. The reason
was the "weakening of positions" of the businessman in St. Petersburg.
- In 2022, Beglov was drenched on all counts: both in the entire media holding and in the FAN. There was shit. If there was a rare case that a little snow fell in September, we were taken out into the field, forced to remove the snow - and this was instantly flooded onto the site. It is known that Beglov does not clean well, but not to such an extent that he should be fucked for having a thin layer of snow in September, ”recalls an ex-employee of RIA FAN.
News from the front and stories about Beglov, as a former RIA FAN journalist says, they tried to dilute with show business, film reviews, international topics, including rewrites of publications of the Kremlin holding RT.
Vladimir Yagudaev of Politika Segodnya believes that Prigozhin's negativity towards Governor Beglov was partially justified, and his editors "tried to make it beautiful, without any rude things."
- Evgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin] sometimes made such plans that neither you nor I would have come up with such a thing. He has a great imagination, very witty. The way it was performed sometimes is, perhaps, the rudeness of the performer, - Yagudayev is sure.
However, in recent months, “Prigozhin’s plans” have become more like
persecution : if earlier his media made claims against the governor due to poor snow removal and garbage collapse, then after the start of the war in Ukraine, they began to regularly create petitions for Beglov’s resignation and spread the demand to judge the head of the city under the article on "treason".
In November 2022, the owner of Wagner PMC partially
explained the reason for such an attitude towards the head of St. Petersburg - he said that he helped Alexander Beglov become governor and spent up to 2 billion rubles on this. According to him, "an important person" promised to reimburse him for the expenses, but did not do this. At the same time, experts
believe that political interests were the trigger for Prigozhin - in 2021, candidates from the Motherland party, whom the businessman openly supported, did not enter parliament. Moreover, Prigozhin was not allowed to develop his business projects in the city.
"Charge the agenda." What tasks did the "troll factory" pursue?
Two former employees of the Patriot holding, in a conversation with
Paper, said that they did not hide it in the “troll factory”: the task of the media, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is to create informational noise in order to “hammer the agenda.”
- Information noise was generated along with the implementation of Prigozhin's interests. While some distracted people with the problems of other countries, with these reports from Africa and so on, with all sorts of our local stars and reviews of stupid films. Others, on the front line, washed people's "brain" with materials from the "NOR zone," the former RIA FAN journalist believes.
Bots also worked in the holding on Primorsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, which created comments with the support of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner PMC and with criticism of his opponents.
- There were probably about 30-50 people sometimes, but they have their own porridge there, - says Vladimir Yagudayev. - I can also tell you for sure that the trolls of Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin are often confused with others who may be related to other Russian structures and people. In the last six months (and especially in recent months) I have observed their paranormal activity in criticizing Prigogine and our editorial staff. New bots even differed in style.
Earlier, experts also
noticed that a network of Internet bots had appeared, which had previously supported Yevgeny Prigozhin, but in May began to criticize him. Then the bot researchers suggested that this could indicate that Prigozhin had lost control of part of the “troll factory” a few months ago. Who exactly owns the new bots is unknown.
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