Internet Research Agency
Russian "troll farm" organization
The Internet Research Agency (IRA; Russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, romanized: Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy; 2013–2023), also known as Glavset (Russian: Главсеть, lit. 'Central Network'), and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino (ольгинские тролли, olginskiye trolli) or Kremlinbots (кремлеботы), was a Russian company which was engaged in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. It was linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Russian oligarch who was leader of the Wagner Group, and based in Saint Petersburg.
The agency was first mentioned in a 2015 article by Adrian Chen in The New York Times, which detailed its operations, although it gained further attention when Russian journalist Andrey Zakharov published his investigation into Prigozhin’s "troll factory". The January 2017 report issued by the United States Intelligence Community—Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections—described the agency as a troll farm: "The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close ally of [Vladimir] Putin with ties to Russian intelligence," commenting that "they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—[and] started to advocate for candidate Trump as early as December 2015."
The agency employed fake accounts registered on major social networking sites, discussion boards, online newspaper sites, and video hosting services to promote the Kremlin's interests in domestic and foreign policy including Ukraine and the Middle East as well as attempting to influence the 2016 United States presidential election. More than 1,000 employees reportedly worked in a single building of the organization in 2015.
The extent to which the organization tried to influence public opinion using social media became better known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed News article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year. The Internet Research Agency gained more attention by June 2015, when one of its offices was reported as having data from fake accounts used for biased Internet trolling. Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks.
On 16 February 2018, a United States grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities, including the Internet Research Agency, on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere "with U.S. elections and political processes", according to the Justice Department. On 1 July 2023, it was announced that the Internet Research Agency would be shut down following the aftermath of the Wagner Group rebellion.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Internet Research Agency” as russian "troll farm" organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as russian "troll farm" organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19842818. VIAF identifies the subject as 25152079155707112088. The Library of Congress control number is no2018027087. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2023, 2015 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Internet Research Agency” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.