Due to its alleged influence on the results of the 2016 elections, which led to Donald Trump's victory as president, the US imposed sanctions on Progozhin's Internet Research Agency in 2018. Source: AP/Prigozhin Press Service, with thanks.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, gained notoriety for leading a private army that attempted to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin on the day he launched a failed mutiny against the Russian military command.
That one, potentially lethal deed has come to characterize the infamous mercenary commander, who is believed to have died after a private plane he was allegedly aboard crashed just north of Moscow on Wednesday.
The aspect of his legacy that may be the most important on a global scale is less well-known.
More than five years before he betrayed Putin, Prigozhin and his Wagner allies tried to exert their influence on world politics in a different way. They did this by creating a "troll farm" that meddled in US elections and, according to high-ranking officials, attempted to sway the results in Donald Trump's favor.
In February 2023, Prigozhin declared himself to be the company's founder and financier. The Internet Research Agency (IRA) is thought to have worked to sway election outcomes on behalf of the Kremlin.
In 2018, the US imposed sanctions on the group due to allegations that it had a hand in Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The effort "evolved from a generalized program designed in 2014 and 2015 to undermine the U.S. electoral system, to a targeted operation that by early 2016 favored candidate Trump and disparaged candidate Clinton," according to a report by former US Special Counsel Robert Mueller published in 2018.
The report added that "IRA personnel also traveled to the United States on intelligence gathering missions."
Even though Prigozhin was later charged with conspiracy to defraud the US, he didn't openly disclose his involvement in electoral intervention until November, just days before the 2022 US midterm elections.
At the time, Prigozhin posted on social media that "We have interfered, we are interfering, and we will continue to interfere." "As best we can, carefully, precisely, surgically, and in our own way."
This was the first instance in which a person officially charged by Washington acknowledged meddling in US politics; in February, Prigozhin went even farther by describing his ties to the IRA.
"I came up with it, made it, and oversaw it.in a tweet published on social media on February 14 he claimed, "for a very long time. It was established to shield the Russian information environment from the aggressive and obnoxious talking points of the West that are hostile to Russia.
The IRA, which was established in 2013, is well known for using fictitious profiles on social media, message boards, and digital news websites to spread pro-Russian propaganda while criticizing or discrediting any information seen as being inimical to Russia's interests.
A group of US government organizations known as the United States Intelligence Community noted in a report from 2017 that "the likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close ally of Putin with ties to Russian intelligence."
The study also stated that the so-called troll farm had previously "devoted itself to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine - [and] started to advocate for candidate Trump as early as 2015."
On July 1st of this year, in the wake ofAs part of a larger closure of his Patriot media organization, Prigozhin shut down the IRA, Prigozhin and Wagner's unsuccessful uprising against the Russian military.
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