Yevgeny Prigozhin could have lost control of the “troll factory” as early as May 2023, the Agency writes , citing two experts monitoring bot activity on Vkontakte and Twitter.
The anonymous creator of the Chef's Trap project told the publication that the bot farm that has been distributing Prigozhin's narratives in recent years has stopped doing so. Until May, about 15,000 fake Vkontakte accounts supported him, but after that only about 1,400 continued to do so.
An analysis of the comments of the bots made it possible to find out that the trolls who praised Prigozhin already in May began to write that Prigozhin was throwing a “hysteria”, creating a “mess” and unjustifiably complaining that the Wagner PMC did not have enough ammunition.
The same trend was noticed on Twitter by Internet troll specialist Darren Linville of Clemson University in South Carolina, USA. Oh notes that approximately 200 fake accounts associated with Prigozhin's "troll factory" did not support the rebellion of the head of PMC Wagner.
On the basis of the “troll factory” that started operating in 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin created the Patriot media holding, which included RIA FAN, Narodnye Novosti, Nevskiye Novosti, Ekonomika Segodnya, and many other publications. On June 30, the closure of the Patriot was reported , as well as the dismissal of its employees, most of which were not formalized.
The Dossier Center previously published material on the internal structure of Prigozhin’s business empire, which includes the media business, the “troll factory”, the Concord group of companies, the Wagner PMC and other projects of the Kremlin chef that oversee school meals, construction, car washes, hotels, a meat processing plant in Africa, gold mining, diamond and oil fishing, etc. All Prigogine's structures are interconnected.