Almost from the moment the polls closed in the 2016 US presidential contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, accusations emerged of Russian interference in the election. Now it appears to have been confirmed from the horse’s mouth: Russian trolls recruited by the Putin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin have meddled in multiple US elections. Prigozhin, known for supplying catering contracts to the Kremlin, openly admitted as much.
‘Gentlemen, we interfered, we are interfering and we will interfere,’ he boasted on the eve of Wednesday’s US midterm elections. He had been asked to confirm findings published by US social media analysis firm Graphica that showed Russian operatives had posted racist cartoons and memes featuring Democratic candidates on pro-Trump platforms in an attempt to influence voters.
Few authentic users bothered to engage with the posts. Nevertheless, this news – and Prigozhin’s confirmation of Russian meddling – will certainly be enough to ensure that the American media will be on the case. So too, probably, will the US Cyber Command, which in 2018 managed to temporarily disrupt internet access to the Internet Research Agency, the troll farm widely acknowledged to be behind Russia’s interference in US elections. The message is clear: US voters can rest assured that their government is doing everything to deter and thwart Russia’s nefarious efforts to upturn Western democracies.
But can they really? Or has the US’s focus on Russian trolls inadvertently helped beef up Prigozhin’s influence instead? For years, Prigozhin has been alleged to be the mastermind behind the Internet Research Agency. More importantly, he has also long been believed to head up the Wagner Group, whose mercenaries, as well as covertly fighting on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine, have conducted operations in Syria and elsewhere since 2014. Despite credible evidence linking him to the group, Prigozhin has, until recently, preferred to remain in the shadows. He repeatedly denied any involvement with the group and, particularly, all allegations of any meddling abroad.
This was because the Kremlin, still hoping to strike a bargain with the West, wanted to keep its foreign aggression deniable and disavowable. Outsourcing its foreign adventures to entrepreneurial freelancers, like catering magnate Prigozhin, who are keen to scoop up government contracts was one way to do this. Only this year, as Russia’s army began to falter in Ukraine and the Wagner Group’s actions began to come to light did Prigozhin finally proudly confirm that he was the organisation’s founder.
But crucially there is one element of the Kremlin’s relationship with Prigozhin that the US seems not to have recognised. As a private entrepreneur, and not an officer of the state carrying out direct orders, the onus has been on Prigozhin to demonstrate to the Kremlin that his activities achieved the impact it desired to warrant the funds he was demanding.
The more publicity Prigozhin gets in the West, the more money he can demand from the Kremlin
In 2018, Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election indicted Russian nationals and the Internet Research Agency on charges of using ‘information warfare’ to ‘sow discord’. The investigation presupposed a centralised chain of command from the Kremlin with a clear-cut aim. But the very nature of the Kremlin’s relationship with Prigozhin – a private actor – casts both of these assumptions into doubt.
From what we know of the Internet Research Agency, it was founded in 2013 initially to target the Russian opposition. In 2014, following the invasion of Crimea, the trolls turned their focus to Ukraine, and then to the US election in 2016. It is hard to tell the extent to which the Kremlin specifically tasked Prigozhin with creating the agency, or indeed whether it intended it for this purpose, or to what extent the idea was pitched to Putin.
Quite possibly, the truth lies somewhere in between, with Prigozhin and other entrepreneurs looking for government contracts and the Kremlin shopping around for useful non-state actors to advance its goals. In that fluid relationship, the entrepreneurs and their poorly-paid trolls who flood Western social media with toxic content are largely self-motivated. Rather than implementing clear government directives, they are driven by political opinions they think align with what the Kremlin wants to hear and that will generate money and favour.
So what impact can entrepreneurs like Prigozhin have? And what specifically were the Kremlin and Prigozhin trying to achieve with their online disinformation campaign?
Internet trolls thrive on publicity and engagement. Prigozhin, long believed to be smarting over his belief that the Kremlin is not paying him enough, has been eager to demonstrate his utility. The actual impact the internet trolls have had on Western elections in recent years has yet to be proven. Nevertheless, his strategy is simple: the more publicity he gets in the West, the more money he can demand from the Kremlin based on the ‘impact’ he has made. In a way, therefore, the Western media’s amplification of his actions does his work for him.
Russian interference in the US elections manifested itself in different ways, including hacks and cyberattacks that were not connected to Prigozhin – but it was the idea that thousands of nameless trolls were posting ‘disinformation’ that caused the most hysteria. And while countering cyberattacks and foreign interference in US electoral infrastructure should certainly remain a priority, responding to trolls in effect only empowers them. It demonstrates to their bosses that they are garnering the attention and the fear that they seek to spread in the first place.
So, what can be done about Prigozhin? The best thing to do is ignore him. His operation to sow disinformation on Western social media may be concerted. But nevertheless it is part of a much bigger problem of toxic content online. Foreign governments – and the likes of Prigozhin – will certainly try to exploit such material. But if a country’s democracy is so vulnerable to nasty lies posted online, its problems are far bigger than foreign interference.
Remember: the more international attention Prigozhin gets, the more money he can demand from the Kremlin. And the more money he receives from the Kremlin, the more powerful and influential he will become.
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