[17][24][25][26][27][28][29], 595903.5N 301619.1E / 59.984306N 30.271972E / 59.984306; 30.271972, According to Russian online newspaper DP.ru, several months before October 2014 the office moved from Olgino to a four-story building at 55 Savushkina Street, Primorskiy district, St. elections. The Guardian spoke to two former employees of the troll enterprise, one of whom was in a department running fake blogs on the social network LiveJournal, and one who was part of a team that spammed municipal chat forums around Russia with pro-Kremlin posts. "Blacktivist" supplied the petitions and poster artwork. AZIMUT Hotels - the largest Russian hotel chain, established in 2006. She says there were usually about 10 topics on the list. According to BuzzFeed News, more than 600 people were generally employed in the trolls' office earlier, in June 2014. MediaSintez LLC, GlavSet LLC, MixInfo LLC, Azimut LLC, and NovInfo LLC. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: OFAC: Associate Director for Global Targeting, tel. )wJkCsG "And this was to stir negative tensions towards Americans, as the creators of this game.". The Russian leader has always stood against aggression and terrorism in general. In mid-2013 the agency won a tender for providing freight services for participants of Seliger camp. The 4-star Azimut Hotel Saint-Petersburg is situated in the very heart of Saint Petersburg about 10 minutes' drive from Palace Square. She was tasked with writing posts that would inflame anti-American sentiment among Russians. Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia. But unofficially, and more commonly, it was known as the "troll factory.". See traveller reviews, 5 candid photos, and great deals for Savushkina 143 at Tripadvisor. The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is publishing the names of one or more persons, aircraft, and vessel that have been placed on OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List based on OFAC's determination that one or more applicable legal criteria were satisfied. Each troll was given a list of topics to focus on by a supervisor. ", "Raport o stanie bezpieczestwa cyberprzestrzeni RP w roku 2014", "The Opinion-Makers: How Russia Is Winning the Propaganda War", "Prorussische Propaganda aus der Schweiz: Twittern fr den Kreml", "Merkel hits diplomatic dead-end with Putin", "Lithuanian 'elves' battle with pro-Russian trolls on social media", "Hunting for paid Russian trolls in the Washington Post comments section", "The readers' editor on pro-Russia trolling below the line on Ukraine stories", " TrolleyBust", "Russian troll farm, 13 suspects indicted for interference in U.S. election", "The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 20122018", "Report: Russia still using social media to roil US politics", "Cop shooting, Ebola scare in Atlanta invented by Russians: Report", "Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate", "Russian trolls 'spreading discord' over vaccine safety online", "Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit, data shows", "Russian firm tied to pro-Kremlin propaganda advertised on Facebook during election", "Facebook Manipulation Echoes Accounts From Russian 'Troll Factory', "Facebook will provide ads bought by Russian company to congressional committees investigating Trump ties", "Facebook Says Russian Accounts Bought $100,000 in Ads During the 2016 Election", "These Americans Were Tricked Into Working For Russia. Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. for providing support to the Russian Defense Ministry as it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, is alleged to be the man who funded the troll factory. Coordinates:. [50] Poland's governmental computer emergency response team later confirmed that pro-Russia commentary had flooded Polish Internet portals at the start of the Ukrainian crisis. The other task sheets demand glowing reviews of the YotaPhone, a Russian-made smartphone, abuse and teasing for Jennifer Psaki, the former US state department spokeswoman, and three relate to Ukraine and the wests plans there. [63][64] Examples of efforts included "campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016", "encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational", and "spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum. SOFTWARE. It's four stories high, made of concrete and shares a small parking lot with the apartment building next door. There was a day shift, a night shift, and even shifts over the holidays. Coordinates:. [85][86], On 25 May 2016, the Westboro Baptist Church held its annual protest of Lawrence High School graduation ceremonies in Lawrence, Kansas. Other employees have to manage 10 accounts on Twitter, publishing 50 tweets every day. That location became one of the ORGANIZATION's operational hubs from which Defendants and other co-conspirators carried out their activities to interfere in the U.S. political system . I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. The Russian government has barred Navalny from running in the Russian presidential election this weekend, but supporters still plaster campaign bumper stickers bearing his name on their laptops. [77] According to The New York Times,[77]. According to a 17 October 2017 BuzzFeed News report, IRA duped four African-American activists into taking real action via protests and self-defense training in what would seem to be a further attempt to exploit racial grievances. [87], "LGBT United" organized a candlelight vigil on 25 June 2016, for the Pulse nightclub shooting victims in Orlando, Florida. [10][11][12], Information of the work being conducted at the Agency comes in part from interviews with former employees. This part of the Neva Bay coast was owned in the mid-19th century by Count Stenbock-Fermor, of Swedish provenance, who bestowed upon it the name of his wife Olga. Starting in og around 2014, the ORGANIZATION occupied an office at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. There are posts about Europes 20 most beautiful castles and signs that show you are dating the wrong girl, interspersed with political posts about Ukraine or suggesting that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is corrupt. Marat shared six of his technical task sheets from his time in the office with the Guardian. The Internet Research Agency (IRA; Russian: -, romanized:Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy), also known as Glavset (Russian: )[1] and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino (Russian: ), is a Russian company engaged in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. internet research agency llc azimut In reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 associated with roughly 3,000 ads that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies. As long ago as 2012 there were leaks suggesting Kremlin youth groups were funding online troll activities. 22-N, ul. [93][94], 17 "Florida Goes Trump" rallies were held across Florida on 25 August 2016. [19][30] In May 2014, Fontanka.ru described schemes for plundering the federal budget, intended to go toward the trolling organization. Tuition possible. "[78], On 23 March 2018, The Daily Beast revealed new details about IRA gathered from leaked internal documents,[79] which showed that IRA used Reddit and Tumblr as part of its influence campaign. And there are security cameras all over the building. IRA groups buy ads for the "Florida Goes Trump" rallies. [100] BlackMattersUS provided one activist with a bank card to pay for rally expenses. It was not good enough to pass. Internet activist Lyudmila Savchuk spent two months working in a "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, Russia. [18][30], A 2015 BBC News investigation identified the Olgino factory as the most likely producer of a September 2015 "Saiga 410K review" video where an actor posing as U.S. soldier shoots at a book that turns out to be a Quran, which sparked outrage. [11][8] In 2017 another whistleblower said that with bonuses and long working hours the salary can reach 80,000 rubles. Using a different set of Twitter accounts, the IRA spreads a hoax about a purported police shooting of an unarmed black woman in Atlanta. The 8,300 people who click on the ads are sent to the Agency's "Being Patriotic" Facebook page. Sanctions List Search has a slider-bar that may be used to set a threshold (i . OFAC: Associate Director for Global Targeting, tel. hide caption. BBC News found among other irregularities that the soldier's uniform is not used by the U.S. military and is easily purchased in Russia, and that the actor filmed was most likely a bartender from Saint Petersburg related to a troll factory employee. The most prestigious job in the agency is to be an English-language troll, for which the pay is 65,000 roubles. [70], In September 2017 Facebook said that ads had been "geographically targeted". Starting in or around 2014, the ORGANIZATION occupied an office at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. [75] According to reporting by Vanity Fair, up until that point, most known efforts had been aimed at "weaponizing the far-right". An American contacts the IRA's "Being Patriotic" account about a possible 11 September event in Miami. Description55 Savushkina Street.jpg English: The Internet Research Agency building, dubbed the Russian troll factory, is seen at Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. [9] Workplaces for troll-employees were placed in basement rooms. list, issued by the National Security Council. Having spent 12 hours in the building, the workers are replaced by another large group, who will work through the night. Today AZIMUT Hotels manages more than 60 hotels and resorts in 50 cities of Russia, Europe and the Middle East with the total room capacity of more than 11 000 rooms. Read the full indictment. While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trumps candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. Savchuk, who considers herself a freelance investigative journalist and activist for free and fair elections, spent most of her time at the troll farm writing as an imaginary Russian woman on the LiveJournal blogging platform, widely used in Russia today. [97], "BlackMattersUS", an IRA website, recruited activists to participate in protests on the days immediately following 20 September 2016, police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina. protest outside, Twitter announces that it identified 201 non-. The protest was heavily promoted by IRA accounts on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, and the IRA website blackmatters.com. No one attended the Lubbock rally. More than 5,500 miles awayin a rather plain-looking office building at 55 Savushkina Street in the northwestern Primorsky District of St. Petersburg, Russiathe trolls took notice. Book now! The requirement for the working hours for the trolls is also mentioned: 50 comments under news articles per day. The trolls were divided into groups. Hundreds worked here, and 13 people, including a man with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were recently named in an indictment connected to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Starobelskaya, St. Petersburg, Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, 50, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) - Treasury Department, State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Ordinance of 4 March 2022 on measures related to the situation in Ukraine (RS 946.231.176.72), annexes 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,13, 14, 15 and 25, Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Recovery, (UE) 2022/260 du 23/02/2022 (UE Ukraine intgrit territoriale - R (UE) 269/2014), Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution NonCommercial. To add colour to their posts, websites have been set up to aid the troll army. Castille had been shot by a St. Anthony police officer in nearby Falcon Heights. : 202-622-2420; Assistant Director for Sanctions Compliance & Evaluation, tel. The trolls worked in teams of three. The troll factory in St. Petersburg, Russia, employed hundreds of young, educated people 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to Savchuk. [8][15], Journalists have written that Alexey Soskovets, who had participated in the Russian youth political community, was directly connected to the office in Olgino, and that his company, North-Western Service Agency, won 17 or 18 (according to different sources) contracts for organizing celebrations, forums and sport competitions for authorities of Saint Petersburg and that Soskovets' company was the only participant in half of those bids. 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg, said to be the headquarters of Russias troll army. UkraineEuropean Union Association Agreement, Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014, Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, to sow discord about the safety of vaccines, Mueller special counsel investigation Criminal charges, according to special counsel Robert Mueller's office, Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (July 2016 election day), Timeline of post-election transition following Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (JanuaryJune 2017), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (JulyDecember 2017), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (JanuaryJune 2018), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (JulyDecember 2018), U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (20192020), "Facebook May Have More Russian Troll Farms to Worry About", "Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare", " BBC , , ", "Facebook suspends 273 accounts and pages linked to Russian misinformation agency", "Documents Show How Russia's Troll Army Hit America", , '' , "Everything you wanted to know about trolls but were afraid to ask", Bureau of International Information Programs, "Special counsel Mueller: Russians conducted 'information warfare' against US to help Trump win", -, : - - , "How Russia's Internet Research Agency Built its Disinformation Campaign", "Wagner chief admits to founding Russian troll farm sanctioned for meddling in US elections", "Why are Russian trolls spreading online hoaxes in the U.S.? That location became one of the ORGANIZATION's operational hubs from which . Google Street View Related: Russian trolls duped global media and nearly 40. [51][52] German-language media websites were also flooded with pro-Russia comments in the spring of 2014. But for the older generation, people who are used to television and are just getting online, they look at all these forums and networks, and it turns out that everyone else out there is even more radical than they are, than their neighbours are., From Britain to Beijing: how governments manipulate the internet, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. KYC Solutions; Denied & Restricted Party Screening; Business Partner Compliance Each of them has a news line, some information about it, and a conclusion that the commenters should reach. AZIMUT Hotel Saint-Petersburg is located on the Fontanka River embankment, just 2 metro stations away from the city center, this hotel is the tallest building in the historic district of St. Petersburg. After two months of working in the troll agency, Marat began to feel he was losing his sanity, and decided he had to leave. [88][89], IRA's "Don't Shoot" Facebook group and affiliated "Don't Shoot Us" website tried to organize a protest outside St. Paul, Minnesota police headquarters on 10 July 2016, in response to the 6 July fatal police shooting of Philando Castile. [37] Many other employees work remotely. Saint Petersburg, Russia, 197183. It is unclear whether the St Petersburg troll hub is the only one or whether there are many others, but what does seem clear is that the enterprise has grown enormously since it was discovered two years ago. Having spent 12. 1/81, , . Some local activists became suspicious of the motives behind the event because St. Paul police were not involved in the shooting. Individual schedule [] Payment every week, 1180 per shift (from 8.00 to 16.00, from 10.30 to 18.30, from 14.00 to 22.00). Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks. [79], On 21 May 2016, two competing rallies were held in Houston to alternately protest against and defend the recently opened Library of Islamic Knowledge at the Islamic Da'wah Center. . Starting in or around 2014, the ORGANIZATION occupied an office at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. The most prominent methods of misinformation were "organic posting, not advertisements", and influence operation activity increased after the 2016 and was not limited to the 2016 election. a. OpenSanctions is free for non-commercial users. That fall, as the Translator Project gained momentum, the IRA relocated, moving to a modern four-story office building with floor-to-ceiling windows at 55 Savushkina Street in St.. - , . VP-CSP; Aircraft Manufacture Date Sep 1991; Aircraft Mode S Transponder Code 400065; Aircraft Model BAE 125 Series 800B; Aircraft Operator Linburg Industries LTD.; Nationality of Registration Cayman Islands; Aircraft Serial Identification 258210 (aircraft) [UKRAINE-EO13661] [CYBER2] [ELECTION-EO13848] (Linked To: LINBURG INDUSTRIES LTD.). There was no contract - the only document she signed was a non-disclosure form. 1/81, , . [19][30] As reported by journalists, the building is officially an uncompleted construction and stayed as such as of March 2015. ". But if you look a little closer, a few details stick out. [76], A December 2018 report by The New York Times based on U.S. Senate data noted that the Internet Research Agency had created 81 Facebook pages around the time of the 2016 election. Savchuk is a supporter of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "LGBT United" was an IRA account that appears to have been created specifically for this event. Technical points used by trolls were taken mainly from content disseminated by RT (formerly [18][31][32], A New York Times investigative reporter was told that the Internet Research Agency had shortened its name to "Internet Research," and as of June 2015 had been asked to leave the 55 Savushkina Street location "a couple of months ago" because "it was giving the entire building a bad reputation." That location became one of the ORGANIZATION's operational hubs from which Defendants and other co-conspirators carried out their activities to interfere in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 3556 0 obj <> endobj The rallies were organized by IRA using their "Being Patriotic" Facebook group and "march_for_trump" Twitter account. She sips a latte in a cafe outside St. Petersburg after dropping her kids off at day care for the afternoon. They passed around petitions calling for a Civilian Police Accountability Council ordinance. One features thousands of pasteable images, mainly of European leaders in humiliating photoshopped incidents or with captions pointing out their weakness and stupidity, or showing Putin making hilarious wisecracks and winning the day. [11] According to journalists, Concord Management organized banquets in the Kremlin and also cooperated with Voentorg and the Russian Ministry of Defence. The Russia Investigations: Mueller Indicts The 'Internet Research Agency'. Planernaya, St. Petersburg, d. 4 litera B pom. A Trump supporter suggests to the IRA Twitter account "March for Trump" that it contact a Trump campaign official. Hacked and leaked documents from that time contain instructions for commenters posting at the websites of Fox News, The Huffington Post, TheBlaze, Politico, and WorldNetDaily. Thanks to the presidents initiatives, the number of terrorist acts inside Russia has decreased dramatically.. The organization, which had a budget of $1.25 million a month, was based out of an office on 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg before it was outed as a proponent of disinformation. The company operates in the Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors sector. The IRA pays the person they hired to build a cage for a "Florida Goes Trump" rally in West Palm Beach, Florida. She told me that I had to write posts that were natural like, for example, 'I am cooking or I am walking down the street and I had this thought about how bad the [pro-Western] Ukrainian president is.' The latest financial highlights indicate a net sales revenue drop of 34.21% in 2020. The desired conclusion of one reads: The majority of experts agree that the US is deliberately trying to weaken Russia, and Ukraine is being used only as a way to achieve this goal. She was said to have managed a $16million budget.[117]. The protest was organized by BlackMattersUS. Russia Today). Democrats rebuke Twitter for its "frankly inadequate" response to Russian meddling. Just after 9pm each day, a long line of workers files out of 55 Savushkina Street, a modern four-storey office complex with a small sign outside that reads Business centre. Address: d. 62/25 litera A pom. First International Russian hotel chain. As he spoke decent English, Marat was sent for a test in the English language department, where he was given the task of writing a one-page text in English about his political views. Savushkina Street, 55, Saint Petersburg, 197183. [34], Novaya Gazeta reported that, according to Alexey Soskovets, head of the office in Olgino, North-Western Service Agency was hiring employees for similar projects in Moscow and other cities in 2013. 100% Best price guarantee only for direct website bookings. They painted a picture of a work environment that was humourless and draconian, with fines for being a few minutes late or not reaching the required number of posts each day.