The Rest Is Classified - 99. Putin's Secret Army: Trump, Wagner And Russia (Ep 2)

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

How did Donald Trump win the 2016 US election? Was Russian interference really behind his unlikely success? And how does one man rock the electoral system of the world’s most powerful nation? In the second instalment of their series on Yevgeny Prigozhin, David and Gordon delve into the murky story of how the Internet Research Agency interfered in the 2016 election and changed the course of history. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026: Buy your tickets ⁠HERE⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 31 January.  ------------------- Try Attio for free at ⁠https://www.attio.com/tric⁠ ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at⁠ ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ⁠⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Video Editor: Vasco Andrade Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at the Rest is Classified.com. Internet operators needed. Work in a glamorous office in Ogino. Three exclamation points. 25,960 rubles per month. The job.

Placing comments on internet sites. Writing thematic posts, blogs, social media. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm David McLaughie. And I'm Gordon Carrara. And that is a job advert that appeared maybe somewhat mysteriously in St. Petersburg in 2013 for work with Yevgeny Pragerald. Or under Yevgeny Progoshin at what is going to be known as the Internet Research Agency.

We should say, Gordon, I guess we left Yvgeny Progoshin last time. Of course, as Putin's caterer, he's won big contracts to feed schools, to feed the Russian military. He's kind of building a presence as a supplier of food services to important Russians. And this chapter is going to show how this guy who, frankly, has been running a food service business is going to get connected with the world of Russian politics, disinformation, and I think really elevate himself on kind of the international stage. Yeah. This is in a way what made him first famous, notorious, particularly for the United States, is his role in disinformation. and election interference. But it, interesting enough, does connect up to his life as a caterer

and onto his life as a mercenary warlord, as we'll see. And I think that's one of the kind of curious things about... This is the missing chapter. The missing link between caterer and mercenary warlord is, of course, a supplier of disinformation services, right? But bear with us, bear with us. Because we left him, yes, as a kind of restaurateur and getting these. big contracts for catering and things like that. But here's the interesting thing. As anyone

who runs a restaurant will know, PR, public relations, you know, is a big deal in the restaurant world. You need to have good PR. And what's interesting is progoshin early on has understood you need very good public relations. And he's very invested in his own public relations and the public relations of his restaurants and then his firms and his catering supply groups. So he spends a lot of time, money, you know, resources promoting himself. He's big on early social media. He's kind of an early adopter of the world of being a kind of content creator, influencer, brand builder for his businesses. You know, he's at the leading edge of that. That's what's interesting about. Yeah. Yeah. And if you were around today, he'd be

posting thirst traps on Instagram, but instead, you know, he's just early stages. Early stages. And so he's built this kind of PR machine and a department doing public relations to help his businesses and go after his critics. Interestingly enough, he's also big on the kind of dark arts to go after anyone who's critical of him or his businesses, including journalists. So he'll smear some and intimidate them. You know, he'll plant stories. He'll do underhand things. And this is going to be a theme that will kind of come back to is the way he kind of has quite almost a personal obsession.

with journalists and people who were critical of him. One example of the dark arts, June 15th, 2012, a roundtable is being held to launch a new business publication and all the bigwigs are being invited. But actually, the whole thing had been organized by Progocent's team, many of whom are posing as part of this new publication. So the new publication is kind of fake. But what they've done is they've ordered in catering from Progoshin's rival for big catering contracts. And he's his rival for doing big events, government contracts, things like that. And then what happens is the guests who are Progoshans people, who are supposedly amongst the BIPs there and working the publication, start vomiting and being incredibly

sick, faking it, we assume, or, you know, inducing it. Private ambulances come and run. And rush them away. And of course, it's all blamed on his rivals catering for this event. And his rival loses loads of contracts. You know, that's the kind of weird stuff and stunt that Progogian is doing. And, you know, he's going to use this kind of media machine to kind of go after anyone who's critical of him. He puts infiltrators into newspapers to gather dirt on people. He puts his critics under surveillance. So what you then get is you get your own kind of security. service within your company who can carry out surveillance on journalists and pressure them. And you are kind of, if you see how you're kind of merging security work with PR work.

And I find that quite interesting. So you'll follow people, you'll beat them up. You'll, you know, you'll spread rumors about them. It's even this talk, it's a bit unconfirmed, that he had a team of poisoners. He actually had people who could poison his rivals, you know, and they were developing poisons. Journalists who investigate him, like there's a guy called Dennis Karotkoff, who's co-written a very good book

called Our Business's Death about it. He gets funeral wreaths delivered to his flat and a severed lamb's head sent to his office. Never good, as a journalist, I can tell you, when a severed lamb's head, when I was at the BBC said, I hated it. I hated it when that happened.

You're just having to clean them off your door stop. Regularly. This makes me think that they really did make themselves sick. I don't think were faking it. They probably have actually poisoned members of their own team. Yeah. In order to, yeah, vomit and then screw up the contract. That's right. And it's also, I think this also says something about the media world in Russia at this time. It's a world in which you can say one thing one day and the opposite the next. And that's just kind of accepted as fine.

Peter Pomerantsev, friends, a great writer captured this in his book. And the title of the book captures it because it's called Nothing is True, Everything is Possible. And it's a title. It's a great book. It's a great book. It comes from his time working in Russian reality TV in the 90s. You know, what he says is that this kind of world in which you can say, black is white, white is black one day and then another and change your views. It creates a kind of apathy about the truth amongst the public where they just go, well, just people, everything's a lie.

And this is a kind of something which develops, I think, in this Russian media ecosystem at the time. And as we'll see, what's going to happen in some ways is that Russia and Progoshin personally will export that. you know, to other countries, this particularly Russian apathetic media style, which has been built over years in there. And Progogian here is going to, again, kind of work these, I mean, I guess really personal contacts to find this kind of scene where he can provide a service that's helpful to Putin. Yeah. So in 2012, it looks like one of Putin's top kind of political advisors, Vyashav Vylauddin, meets Progosian. Now, Putin's advisors seem to think that the Kremlin is not very good at PR. You know, they're worried about protests. They think they're on the back foot.

But Progoshan's team seem pretty good at this kind of manipulation and dark arts. And so they're going to ask Proggeon to help. There's a slight ambiguity over how far people are asking for help and how far he's knocking on the door, offering himself up for help. Well, that's what we should say. I mean, that'll be a theme, spoiler alert here, of all of the Wagner story is how much of this is sort of directed by the Kremlin and how much of it is Progossian's kind of entrepreneurial spirit. It just so happens to overlap with what they want. The interests and preferences of the Russian state. And to me, you know, this is a key theme because I think it goes back to his days as a restaurateur.

He knows what people want. He's got this instinctive sense of a kind of business on. entrepreneur. Before you even order it. He's got this feeling. I know what you want. He's showing up with it to you. He's got it on the menu. On the menu. Ready for you. Or a disinformation campaign. Or a disinformation campaign. And so there's a big focus in Russia on what are called political technologists. So people who can manipulate. Great job title. But it's kind of, it's a peculiarly Russian job title. I mean, it's not quite spin doctor. It's not quite someone who's just managing the press day to day. It's someone who thinks about, I suppose you call it strategic communications. Like, how do you manipulate the public to get a message out?

You know, how do you create certain narratives? And in Russian politics, it's a kind of big thing. Used to be about TV, but now it's moving online into social media. And I think they can see in the Kremlin, Progoshin has got the expertise. So they're going to start turning to him for help. Dirty tricks, including like organizing protests, fake protests sometimes, you know. they seem to do this when Obama, President Obama visits for a summit in 2013, and there's some activists out there supporting him pro-gay rights, and this seems to have been created by Progen to kind of control the protests, also spread disinformation about social media, discredit the protests. Again, there's a kind of interesting fusion between security work and media

work, which Progoshin has kind of pioneered in his company, which is now spreading. And this leads, crucially, to Project Lacta, run out of a squat building in St. Petersburg, home to this organization, now notorious, called the Internet Research Agency, registered July 2013, a very famous, important institution, which Progogian is going to be kind of mysteriously behind, I think. And he is very adamant throughout much of it. his life that he doesn't really have a role to play with the internet research agency, right?

Yeah. Which is odd. Yeah. For a very self-promoting character. But I guess this is a point where maybe he's getting the kind of contracts that require him to be slightly more discreet than he was as a caterer. The internet research agency, of course, now become famous. But I mean, I guess it's what's the best way to think about this?

a PR agency? Yeah, I think it's a PR agency. Yeah. I think it's a kind of slightly dark PR agency. It's got different divisions. There's also a news agency, Progoshin it's got, which is called the Federal News Agency, which looks like a kind of regular news website and things, but it's basically a means of getting, you know, material out of propaganda channel. But there's also kind of data analytics. There's people who study public opinion. It's a professional outfit to understand and manipulate public opinion. That's what it is. And it's going to start recruiting in 2013. You read from this job advert, you know, people could earn a thousand dollars a month. It's pretty good money in some cases. Writing comments and blog posts for websites in a nice

office. I mean, that sounds like quite a good job. But really, it's a bit of a forum, isn't it? Yeah, it's really like a factory job. You're working a 12-hour shift every day. You've got strict quotas to write at least 10 posts of 750 words across three accounts. Normally it's kind of attacking people. Sometimes they'll have like one post saying, I think this. And then you'll have two other identities, maybe written by the same person, attacking it and having a different view. And then the first person going, oh, okay, I agree with you. You know, the idea is you're showing that people have had their minds changed.

A lot of it is attacking people or trolling them online, which is why, of course, becomes known as a troll factory. But it's doing it on an industrial scale. You know, it's not automated. It's not the world of AI yet. It's all just done by these individuals. And by 2015, it's going to have 800 to 900 people. Bloggers and commentary management departments, rapid response departments, you know, department of social media specialists, all these kind of different things.

You know, it's a proper, proper place. And I guess it's one of these places where, especially now looking back, we sort of color it with these very sinister tones. And yet, most of the people who are working here are like, it's a thousand bucks a month. Yeah. I just, I needed work. Yeah. You know, and I kind of just had to sit there all day and post this stuff.

I mean, I love this teacher who started working at the agency in late 2014. He said, I immediately felt like a character in the book, 1984. The agency was a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white, which, again, you know, nothing is true and everything is possible, the title of that great. Yeah. Peter Pomerantzit book, the sense of just the truth doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. And it maybe doesn't even exist. Yeah. And he says your first feeling when you ended up there was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling truths into an industrial assembly line. And he'd just been a teacher who needed the money, you know, and he's a bit unemployed. One more detail from this person, I think, is good. He said, even though it wasn't public, everyone knew Progosion was behind it. And he said, he's known as the main chef of the Kremlin. And yet in this huge build, the internet research agency in St. Petersburg, there was no cafe, no cafeteria, nothing. Everyone brought their own little jars and flasks. I love that. I mean, given the, the dysentery that he was subjecting Russian schoolchildren to, I think maybe they should be

grateful. They were grateful. Yeah, they weren't getting the white truffle menu. They would be getting the school menu, I think. So what are they doing? I mean, the initial targets of all this trolling are close to home. And I think that's worth saying, because we think of it interfering abroad. but actually the first target is at home. The Kremlin sees itself as engaged in a kind of political warfare with the West. The West is trying to stir up protests in Russia and in its neighbourhood, and their job is to stop that. So, you know, the idea is you control the information space to prevent the CIA through the internet,

which Putin says the internet's a CIA project, undermining the grip on power. The aim is domestic as stability. So you're going to get Twitter accounts, supporting the government narrative, supporting Russian culture. Interestingly, lots of focus on going after Alexei Navalny, who's just starting out then as a kind of blogger and someone who's going on YouTube doing videos about corruption in Russia. And a lot of the kind of trolls seem to be going after him.

He's pointing out corruption in the defence ministry. And these videos are going to get watched by millions. You know, of course we know eventually he's going to get imprisoned, hunted down, and everyone assumes killed by the Kremlin. But, you know, this issue of corruption is obviously very sensitive in Russia. And so the trolls are kind of unleashed to go after him, kind of discredit him, because they kind of know that's a weak spot. But then I guess around 2014, as Russia takes Crimea,

little green man going into Ukraine, And you get this kind of hybrid war where the Russians have starting to kind of set their sights on destabilizing Ukraine as a political project. Those tools get turned abroad for the first time. Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the interesting moment. Starts domestic. Then you get the Ukraine crisis. And we'll do a bit more about Ukraine crisis, you know, as we look at the mercenary group as we come onto that.

But it's a big moment, a kind of big break with the West. They're worried about Western sanctions and what the West might be doing. So it starts to expand the foreign desks. There's a bit of it which is obviously into Ukraine itself, but they're also trying to press certain narratives into Western media, into European media about what's happening in Ukraine and about attacking the idea that Russia is somehow invaded or trying to take parts of Ukraine

and trying to kind of push back against the possibility of sanctions and the narrative that Russia's the aggression. here. So that's the kind of next shift as it starts to kind of move abroad, but then crucially, it's going to start turning its focus not just to Europe, but the United States. Because now we're into kind of 2014, but already they've got their eyes on an American election coming up in 2016. And, you know, President Obama has done his two terms, so it's going to be an open contest. If you put yourself in the mindset of Putin, the Kremlin and these people, They go, well, the CIA has been interfering in our politics.

You know, they were behind these protests against Putin's return to power in the elections. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, who they're going to blame for some of that. She's potentially running for president in 2016. Let's see what we can kind of mess with when it comes to them. So you can see the kind of evolution of how the Internet Research Agency is kind of pushing from domestic to kind of Ukraine, the West, and then thinking, let's take the fight to them. And I guess it's probably still a bit of an open question, at least, you know, sort of outside of intelligence agencies, to what extent progosion was being and the internet research agency was being tasked with specific targets by the Kremlin?

And I guess maybe, I mean, what you're saying is you don't need to be. Yeah. Because you kind of know, just by virtue of being, you know, connected. Yeah. Politically connected. You kind of know what's of interest to Putin and the advisors around him who's disliked the targets are. So you don't need someone to tell you or to be directly controlling this project from the Kremlin. You can kind of freelance yourself and provide useful services to them without them even needing to ask.

Yeah. That election is 2016. And yet already in April 2014, the Internet Research Agency is going to create a different. department, which goes by different names, but one was the translator project, kind of good cover name, but it's going to focus on the US. You know, it's going to be, okay, let's see how we can use these kind of dark arts of PR, social media trolling and push them on US social media platforms, things like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It's going to have eventually more than 80 employees in that one department. And they're immediately going to start thinking, how can we mess with the American election? And we should say here, we're going to talk, of course, a little bit about this now, but we are going to do a proper broader series on Russian involvement in an interference in the 2016 election. There's a lot of different aspects of questions, you know, sort of storylines to that. This is one of them, which we'll talk a little bit about now, but we're going to, we'll treat that, you know,

in kind of the full detail that it's due at some point later on. Because I think we're interested here from the point of view of the Internet Research Agency in Progosion and his role. I think the key point is that they're starting to think about this in April 2014. So, you know, kind of two and a half years out about this kind of information warfare. They've understood social media, huge impact in the US at that point, you know, huge audiences in which you can claim to be anonymous. Or you can create a different identity without any real checks. You can pose as an American without being an American. So you can create, you know, different entities and dive into social media and affect it.

And of course, this is the bit I think is really interesting, is that if you want to play in that space, you need to understand American culture. And so one of the things they do is they go out and do field research. They send four staff members from the Internet Research Agency out to the United States in the summer of 2014. They do a 22-day tour of the U.S., which is basically a kind of intelligence gathering operation. I mean, it's not spying, but they're going to go to... Sounds like a boondagall. It does sound like a good trip. Because they're going to go, Nevada, I bet they went to Vegas, California, how nice.

New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York. All of that in this 22-day trip to basically understand America. so that you know how to do your social media influence. That is a good trip. It's a great trip. It depends on where they stayed. My guess is this was not particularly well capitalized by the Internet Research Agency, so who knows where they were staying.

I also think, I mean, is this espionage, do you think, Gordon? Not really. Right. They're literally traveling around talking to Americans. I mean, because they're trying to get a feel for the place to know how they can then manipulate it. to play to it. Is it espionage?

I don't know. What is it? I think at this point, especially, it's, I don't know. I guess is it, is it espionage if they are undercover Russian intelligence officers? Yeah. Is it? Well, yes. But not in this case because it's a bunch of, you know,

Yahoo. PR Yahoo's from the internet research agency. I think it's not. I do think maybe who the person is does matter. So if you're working at an entity that is not an intelligence. intelligence service, even if it's subcontracted in a way that makes it adjacent. Maybe it's not. I also think, you know, there's a broader question about in an open society like the

States, things that maybe elsewhere could be considered espionage or not. Yeah. Because, you know, if you get the visa, you're not stealing secrets. No. You're just talking to people and interacting with an open society. you know, I think that's not. It's not espionage, even if the report ends up getting filtered into, you know, an effort to widen cracks that exist in a society that they went to study. Yeah.

So they're going to write up these reports from the trip and they're going to be incredibly valuable. Other people are going to go to Atlanta or other places. And it's going to feed into the data analysis group. So what you can see is they are, they're doing something new here. And it's something which I think is off the radar at that point and which no one quite understand. or sees, and yet is going to be, as we'll see, hugely controversial. I would bet that this information was not being collected by the SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.

So I would bet that this is something that was actually, even if the findings might have been somewhat high level or even kind of obvious, a lot of the facts that I presume that they would have included in this report, conversations with ordinary Americans, things like that, whatever, that color is probably not making its way into the Kremlin through official intelligence channels. And it reminds me a little bit of some of the types of academic or field reports that the agency might get its hands on

that are coming from parts of the world that are of interest to us, where there's such a high bar for foreign intelligence that you're spying. It's not a secret. It's not secret. It's not secret, but it's also if you're an intelligence officer, you're an analyst, you're operating in this world of all of the stuff that you're reading is it's stolen secrets. And yet there's huge swaths of the society of the culture that are sort of open, but that you might not really have a lot of great information on. And I actually think it's one of the weaknesses of a spy service is that you end up in these bubbles.

of really classified information that isn't always the most useful stuff depending on the question you're trying to answer. And I think in this case, again, this gets to the point of like progoshin as an entrepreneur, this is probably stuff that inside the Kremlin or inside these kind of corridors of power around Putin is really interesting.

Yeah. You know? And I think we'll talk, of course, later about how impactful was any of this stuff really on the election. But you can see how it would have been really useful to Prokosian. And so maybe there, Gordon, with Canada, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton squaring off in really the final weeks and months of the 2016

campaign. Let's take our break when we come back. We will see how Yevgeny Progoshin and in the Internet Research Agency medal to potentially affect the outcome of that election. This episode is brought to you by Atteo. The CRM for the AI era. Now, David, people think that SpyCraft is just car chases and secret codes, but an awful lot of it is just idling around, waiting for the action. It's a bit like starting your own business.

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Atio even has something called agent collaboration. Yes, but in this case, that means giving people the ability to let AI work seamlessly in the background for them. for them. Try Atio for free at A-T-T-I-O dot com slash trick. Well, welcome back. We're in the middle of the 2016 election, and you have Ganyi Progoshans' trolls at the internet research agency are hard at work. What are they up to, Gordon? Well, a lot of it is on Facebook. Remember that? Kids might not know what Facebook is. It was this social media platform many years ago.

Gordon, Gordon, we have a Facebook page for the Declassified Club. Sorry. Which hopefully you have Gady Progoshin's successes are not interfering with as we speak. I am apologizing to all of our secret squirrels on behalf of my co-host Gordon career. And I will add this to his nut file. Thank you very much. There are people creating fake email accounts. to go on these Facebook pages like All 4 USA at Yahoo.com, and then they purchase.

You said yuhu.com. Jordan, you're exposing your vast ignorance about the interweb. The early stages of the interwebs here. They're creating fake accounts, purchasing ads on Facebook and other companies. One of the points is they're pushing ads, particular messages, often division. One of the things we should say is they're kind of pushing both sides, often if an argument. They're just trying to divide. Yeah.

That's the point. That's the point. It's division. And it's also within the kind of playbook of the KGB, you know, if you go back planting stories, smearing candidates, smearing people. You know, there's a long history of that by the KGB in American elections. You know, they tried to undermine Ronald Reagan's candidacy at various points. They spread smear stories about AIDS. They spread claim that the CIA was behind the JFK.

Which infected your brain. It's good. Listeners to our mini-series, our two-class of my club mini-series on the conspiracy theories that sort of come out of this relationship between JFK and the CIA and Cuba. Yeah. Well, no, Gordon Carrera's synapses and Grayb matter were fired by KGB conspiracy theories. Yeah, because that was a kind of KGB planting fake stories, trying to engineer division in American society in the 60s. So they, you know, in a way, they've always done.

that. That is the kind of KGB Russian playbook. The difference is now they've got a mechanism to do it through social media, which they can use remotely and anonymously, which is very effective and largely unpoliced at this time. And I think this says something interesting about the relationship between spy services and contractors. Eventually, I mean, we'll see when we deal with the story in full that Russia's Intel services are involved in this, but it's also being contracted out to the internet research agency. This ostensibly private sector company that's doing this on behalf of the Russian state. So you kind of, you see this blend of, it's essentially a contract effort, right? And that's the Kregosian story, isn't it? Which would

have never happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s in Russia. That's very true. Very controlled and centralized by the KGB. And it's not anymore. Yeah. And that's the nature of the kind of new Russian state in a way. So yeah, you get all these posts fostering division. You get kind of blacktivist basquerading as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, drawing 350,000 followers, and then you get Heart of Texas. I don't know if you remember that one, 250,000 followers. They're playing both sides. One of the bits that's interesting is, you know, they're playing both sides, fostering division, putting out messages. They also organize real world stunts, you know, and I think this is also interesting. It's a bit like, you know, the fact he was organizing fake demos, poisoning people.

They're doing the same stuff in the American election. You can see the playbook. So they'll have someone in St. Petersburg who'll create a fake identity, say, called Matt Skyber, who's won. He's going to create a Facebook account, and then he's going to contact a real American to ask them as a recruiter for a March for Trump rally in New York. They're going to pay for ads for this, and they're going to contact this person and give them money to print posters and also get a megaphone. they're kind of organising flashmobs, you know, protests remotely by engaging with real Americans, you know, all the way from this kind of office in St. Petersburg, the same kind of Russian posing up Matt Skyber and American is going to recruit a real American to acquire a prison costume. Another person is paid to build a cage for a pickup truck. And then a Twitter account organises for an actress to dress up as a caged hill.

Clinton in prison uniform in West Palm Beach. So it's interesting. You know, you can see them organizing stunts, basically, PR stunts. It's very progosin. It's very progion. And this is what's interesting, is, you know, promoting these rallies, using real Americans, doing all of this. And they, you know, contact about 100 real Americans through these fake accounts. And these people, of course, have got no idea they're dealing with Russians.

So it is interesting how ambitious it was and how, in some ways, how Russian it was. but I guess this is the question how much difference did it make I mean I think it's very very hard to say how much difference that make how many minds did it change did it swear an election I think it's I mean it's estimated

that I think 126 million Americans might have seen the Facebook posts now that sounds like a lot but when I see a post on social media you know does it change my mind does it change my view it's a Kennedy conspiracy it's unlikely to then you're then you're hooked yeah i so my hot take on this is it it has very little impact some

impact but very little and i think in i mean you know the decade since almost there have been a number of leaked reports that have come out from the internet research agency and other sort of disinformation efforts on the part of the russian state and what's what strikes me as i think is really fascinating about them is how bureaucratic these efforts are and how much of it is a self-licking ice cream cone. Yeah. Where essentially the proof of impact is just the activity itself. Yeah.

And it's often a way. And I think it's a high profile way. And this is why someone like Yibgeni Progoshan, I think, would see value in this. Yeah. Again, think about him, Progoshin as this sort of courtier on the outskirts of Putin's medieval sort of center of power. Having these kind of videos is a great way to show that you're important and you're doing something. The actual impact that it has on the outcome in the states or the extent to which Americans are divided is almost irrelevant. And a lot of what you see in these leaked documents is this kind of self-congratulation on the part of, you know, the Russians who are involved in these efforts.

And it's very bureaucratic, you know, they're showing the stuff as a way to get more funding and more access and, you know, sort of spotlight shown on these efforts internally in Russia. I kind of think, you know, we'll get to the bigger 2016 story, and there were some other elements to the influence campaign that I think probably had more of an impact. I agree, yeah. But this kind of social media posting, I'm pretty skeptical. Yeah, no, I think I'm the same. And I agree. I think some of the other stuff that actually Russian intelligence did in terms of hacking the DNC and some of those issues, that possibly had more impact. But the one thing I think it does have an impact on is I think how many votes have changed?

I think it's almost impossible to know. And I agree, it's probably that much. It does kind of sour the information environment, you know, because the combination of kind of social media disinformation, the possibility that had an impact, all of this is going to kind of create a kind of confusion, a noise around what's truth, who's who on the internet, who's trying to manipulate me. And in a way, it's exporting that Russian world of, you know, nothing is. true, everything is possible from the Russian media environment into the Western media environment, you know. And I think that's one of the big legacies of it, is the kind of, yeah, the disruption and the lack of trust it creates an information, which is ultimately to the kind of Kremlin's

long-term benefit, I think. But it really is, I guess, in the wake of this effort, that Progosion becomes known. Yeah. U.S., and really it kind of puts a target on his back in the way. Not literally, but the FBI, the agency, sort of to become aware that this guy is responsible for the souring of this information environment. Yeah, nothing is, I mean, it's interesting because nothing at the time public links his company Concord with the whole interference.

He's, he always at this point denies it. There's a kind of maze of shell companies. it looks like the Internet Research Agency is run by some kind of, you know, political technologists, as they're called, some PR people. But there's a brilliant clue which comes actually from the Internet Research Agency itself. Because at the end of May 2016, some of those people in St. Petersburg, some of the trolls, are going to convince an unnamed American in Washington, D.C., to stand in front of the White House holding a sign and to be pictured doing so. And the sign says, happy 55th birthday, dear boss. And the dear boss was Progogian, whose birthday was coming up. Because you can imagine it's like the birthday card from the guys at the Internet Research Agency going, look, you know, here's someone in front of the White House saying, happy birthday.

But it also kind of makes clear he's the boss. That is sort of classically Progosion, right? I mean, it's the people below him are essentially mirroring. something that he would have done to the people above him. Yeah. It's a curry favor. Exactly. Yeah.

And I mean, that detail comes from the indictment that the U.S. is going to issue in 2018 over the interference. And, you know, that indictment is going to kind of link progosian, Internet research agency, Concord Catering, you know, and kind of point to the connections between them all and that he's behind it. And he's going to actually appear on the FBI's most wanted list at that point. and there's going to be sanctions on him and that is I think uncomfortable for him

because I think he has wanted to kind of keep a low profile at least in this kind of space that he's doing these kind of things and he's kept his businesses at arm's length he is getting rich not super rich you know the estimate is by 2016 he's worth maybe $110 million

maybe a bit more pretty good you consider this to be not super rich by Russian oligarchs okay that's That's an important yardstick to standards. That's right. That's like, he's got the yacht. You know, review that BBC contract.

He's got the yacht, the private jets. He's got a vintage powder blue Lincoln Continental car. Interesting. Big estate outside St. Petersburg. Full basketball court. He doesn't strike me just looking at his physique that he was a basketball player. No. No.

Because we should say by this point, it's kind of big, balding, a bit of swagger. But not. Yeah. Not a basketball guy. He's coming into public view. And I think, you know, with the indictments, with the U.S. election, I think that is a problem for him because he's worried about that he's going to lose his private jets. They're going to get impounded. So he goes on the offense and he kind of basically says, I've got nothing to do with the Internet Research Agency.

He's going to employ, and this is going to be another, you know, thing he pioneers, that kind of thing which is called lawfare, which is using lawyers to kind of go off. your enemies and using the law to go after them because he's going to employ D.C. lawyers and later he's going to employ London lawyers to both fight the charges but also go after journalists and others who say that he is behind the internet research agency. And he's going to deny, you know, any links to the state. One of the interesting things is then Putin starts getting asked about progosin. And he compares progosion to George Soros, the Hungarian philanthropist who supports liberal causes around the world.

And the point that Putin is making is like, these are just people, rich people, pursuing their own private endeavors. And Putin, I love this, Putin kind of mocks the West for falling so low as to suspect a restaurateur from Russia of influencing the U.S. election. You know, he's like, how could you think this chef could, you know, possibly influence your election? Sure, he may have a prison tattoo on his back carved in by, with soot and urine. but he's just a chef how can your election be influenced by this chef and progoshed himself

kind of denies it and he's going to deny it actually until I mean the eve of his death only don't want to give that away too much just plot spoiler we need our producer Becky to get her bleep gun ready next time you issue a spoiler

a spoiler that progoja may not survive it's only at the very end of this story that's put it that way that he'll actually admit he was behind the internet He's going to deny it all that time. And that's partly about him trying to, I think, protect his wealth effectively. So, Gordon, I think there with this picture of a man who's a restaurateur, a PR and disinformation tycoon, we obviously have the building blocks of someone who is going to

become a mercenary leader. Obvious. Obviously. But let's leave it there. And next time we will see how Progogian takes this leap into running what will become known as Wagner Group and its forays into Ukraine, Syria, and some other really terrible parts of the world. But remember, if you don't want to wait and nothing ever good came by waiting, go to the rest is classified.com, join the declassified club, get early access to this entire series. binge listen. We hope you join. We'll see you next time. See you next time.