{"id":1106507,"date":"2023-06-26T23:16:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T23:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/production.public.theintercept.cloud\/?p=433106"},"modified":"2023-06-26T23:16:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T23:16:17","slug":"prigozhin-mastered-information-war-tactics-in-2016-u-s-election-before-his-mutiny-against-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/06\/26\/prigozhin-mastered-information-war-tactics-in-2016-u-s-election-before-his-mutiny-against-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Prigozhin Mastered Information War Tactics in 2016 U.S. Election Before His Mutiny Against Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Long before he<\/u> plunged Russia into its most significant political crisis in three decades, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin caterer turned mercenary warlord and then mutineer, had built a profitable empire interfering in the politics and crises of countries around the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin\u2019s sprawling businesses include not only the Wagner mercenary group that became a household name when it joined Russian forces in Ukraine \u2014 before launching an armed insurrection against Moscow<\/a> last week \u2014 but also an online army that has fought wars over information from Sudan to the United States, where Prigozhin remains under federal indictment over his alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe misinformation piece is a huge part of the narrative,\u201d Raphael Parens, a fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute\u2019s Eurasia Program who has long researched Prigozhin and Wagner, told The Intercept. He added that influencing public discourse is one of Wagner\u2019s \u201ctop tools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin\u2019s brief rebellion and ongoing rhetoric<\/a> against the government of his once close associate Vladimir Putin played out online as much as on the ground, as he successfully utilized the messaging service Telegram to communicate with the public. Social media\u2019s prominent role in the rebellion echoed Prigozhin\u2019s earlier online battles, where he often seized on a vacuum of reliable information to seek to control the narrative or actively worked to sow doubt and chaos around what was happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Over the weekend, as the world\u2019s intelligence agencies and pundit classes scrambled<\/a> to analyze rapidly shifting developments, Prigozhin himself was often the source of the little information around the attempted coup, which he said was not a coup but a \u201cmarch for justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin launched his short-lived insurrection against the Russian government in a series of social media posts<\/a> on Friday, in which he accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering deadly airstrikes on Wagner mercenaries. (Some analysts concluded<\/a> that the video he posted purportedly showing evidence of such an attack was likely staged.) He also challenged Putin\u2019s official narrative for launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year \u2014 a significant act of defiance in a conflict Prigozhin and his forces have actively participated in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin\u2019s brief rebellion and ongoing rhetoric against the Putin government played out online as much as on the ground.<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24,\u201d Prigozhin said<\/a> in a Telegram video on Friday. \u201cThe Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there was insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the next 36 hours, Prigozhin kept posting online. Telegram channels that often share Wagner-related content circulated videos<\/a> of Wagner men who had seized control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, a key military hub near the Ukrainian border. On Saturday, Prigozhin turned his men around 120 miles outside Moscow after reaching a deal with Putin brokered by Belarus\u2019s President Alexander Lukashenko.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For an episode with the potential for monumental global repercussions, accurate, reliable information remained wildly elusive even days after Prigozhin\u2019s forces retreated. That is in part due to the Russian government\u2019s tight control of the media, with independent outlets forced to shut down or move abroad since last year\u2019s invasion and foreign media still in the country operating in extremely difficult circumstances<\/a>. Within hours of the uprising starting, Russian internet service providers began to block access to Google News<\/a>, while observers outside Russia rushed to verify whether reports and videos emerging on social media were real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, Russian officials spoke publicly, with Putin addressing the nation on Saturday and then again on Monday. But by that point, Prigozhin\u2019s message had already spread through Russia, where people are increasingly turning to Telegram for alternative \u2014 if hardly more reliable \u2014  information than that coming from official state sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe kind of hit this media space that has eroded in the last 10, 15 years,\u201d said Parens, referring to a Russian media landscape that has shrunk under Putin\u2019s rule, but also to a phenomenon \u2014 the rise of disinformation \u2014 hardly unique to Russia. \u201cHe and the organization managed to hit a gap in Russian society, and you could also say a gap in Western society and the way that we are able to deal with misinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Criminal to Chef, Warlord to Mutineer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Born in 1961 in Leningrad \u2014 today\u2019s St. Petersburg \u2014 Prigozhin was once sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony following a conviction on charges ranging from armed robbery to fraud to \u201cinvolving minors in criminal activity,\u201d according to a leaked resume<\/a> published by The Intercept earlier this year. Once released, he launched a fast-food chain that soon boomed into a sprawling catering business serving the Kremlin, which earned Prigozhin the nickname \u201cPutin\u2019s chef\u201d and brought him face to face with dozens of heads of state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As he grew closer to Putin following his 2012 reelection to the presidency, Prigozhin expanded his relationship with the Kremlin by financing the Internet Research Agency, a \u201ctroll farm\u201d behind a series of online disinformation campaigns, including a bid to influence the 2016 U.S. election. And he built Wagner \u2014 a successor of the Slavonic Corps, a paramilitary group involved in the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine \u2014 into an infamous and brutal<\/a> mercenary force that has been accused of widespread atrocities across multiple continents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until last year, Prigozhin denied any involvement in the more shadowy businesses he is today most known for, fiercely fighting U.S. and European Union sanctions against him and suing journalists<\/a> who reported on his connections to Wagner. But he abruptly switched course last year, as the war in Ukraine raised his global profile and that of his mercenaries. Since then, he has embarked on an intensive media offensive: appearing in videos that showed him recruiting prisoners in Russian prisons, on the battlefield in Ukraine, and alongside dozens of corpses of Wagner fighters whose deaths he blamed on the incompetence of Russian military leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The social media blitz around the weekend insurrection was a culmination of Prigozhin\u2019s monthslong campaign to dominate the narrative about Wagner and its role in Ukraine. As his name became as recognizable as Putin\u2019s over the last year, leading to speculation that he might be angling to replace him<\/a>, Prigozhin issued dozens of often bombastic statements to journalists \u2014 including to The Intercept<\/a> \u2014 through the PR arm of his catering business, while also increasingly turning to Telegram to launch screeds against his rivals in Russia and finally, to chronicle his rebellion against them in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe likes to be in the limelight. It does feel like he\u2019s playing into the whole theater of the moment.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s certainly one of the people who is more plugged in than others with the Russian government and who has recognized the use of Telegram and social media and that actually uses that to get what he wants,\u201d John Lechner, an independent researcher and author of an upcoming book<\/a> about the Wagner Group, told The Intercept. \u201cPrigozhin has been at the forefront of really effectively using Telegram and social media to advocate for his own objectives vis-\u00e0-vis other rivals in the Russian government who either don\u2019t have the permission or the ability to pull that off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin\u2019s online persona \u2014 and his skill at commandeering attention to himself by frequently issuing over-the-top statements \u2014 is also a product of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe likes to be in the limelight,\u201d said Parens. \u201cIt does feel like he\u2019s playing into the whole theater of the moment. In order to get the attention, and in order to get retweets are reposting and all that, you have to kind of go to the extreme. It\u2019s the social media effect of \u2014 the way the military and political spheres look to the public now is just completely different than the way it looked maybe 10 years ago; there\u2019s just this need to dramatize things to show your point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin\u2019s Playbook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Prigozhin\u2019s mastery of social media to serve his business and political goals goes at least as far back as the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A U.S. federal grand jury indicted him in 2018 in one of the highest-profile prosecutions to emerge from the two-year Mueller investigation. Prigozhin was accused <\/a>of \u201cconspiracy to defraud the United States\u201d along with 12 other individuals, two companies he controls, and the Internet Research Agency. At a press conference<\/a> announcing the charges, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein accused Prigozhin and his co-defendants of seeking to spread \u201cdistrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Prigozhin boasted<\/a> of having been involved in that interference. \u201cWe did it only because the U.S. boorishly interfered in Russian elections in 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012,\u201d Prigozhin wrote through a representative in an email<\/a> to The Intercept. \u201c50 young guys, whom I personally organized, kicked the entire American government in the ass. And we will continue to do so as many times as needed.\u201d The charges against him remain active, though prosecutors dropped the charges against his companies in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In several African countries, too, where Wagner has worked with local governments to quash rebellions or political rivalries \u2014committing widespread human rights abuses in the process \u2014 it has also engaged in information warfare. In Mali and the Central African Republic, Wagner has promoted social media pages as well as local radio stations advancing its clients\u2019 interests, for instance by amplifying rhetoric against the French and United Nations presence in those countries. \u201cThey\u2019re very media savvy,\u201d said Lechner, noting that those efforts vary from country to country. \u201cThey\u2019re turning out these narratives that are specifically crafted to the local environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At times, Wagner\u2019s media campaigns seemed aimed at bolstering its business, creating an opportunity for a formal relationship with various governments. In Mali, for instance, the Foundation for National Values Protection, a Russian think tank under U.S. sanctions<\/a> over its role disseminating disinformation, released an opinion poll just before Wagner finalized a deal<\/a> with the Malian government claiming to show widespread popular support<\/a> among Malians for such an involvement. The think tank, headed by Maxim Shugaley<\/a>, a close associate of Prigozhin, had run and promoted similar polls in the Central African Republic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Burkina Faso last year, hours after a military coup, crowds cheering the takeover waved Russian flags. Months later, Wagner forces were reported<\/a> to be supporting the military junta in the country. (This year, Burkina Faso\u2019s government denied<\/a> contracting with Wagner, but said it would work with \u201cRussian instructors\u201d to train soldiers using equipment purchased from Russia, a phrase<\/a> often used by Russian officials themselves to obliquely refer to the mercenaries). In Sudan, before the ousting of former President Omar al-Bashir, Wagner, which had business dealings in the country\u2019s mining industry, was also involved in disinformation campaigns<\/a> against regime rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re definitely experimenting with disinformation in these different contexts,\u201d Parens said, \u201cand trying to figure out how to influence populations.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n \n \n\n

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\n Related <\/h2>\n \n<\/section>\n\n
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\r\nThis content originally appeared on The Intercept<\/a> and was authored by Alice Speri.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long before he plunged Russia into its most significant political crisis in three decades, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin caterer turned mercenary warlord and then mutineer, had built a profitable empire interfering in the politics and crise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63020,42880,46225,1841,43014,3973,42751,63770,63625,63657,1864,27150,63771,42603,25849,43032,204,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106507"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120781,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106507\/revisions\/1120781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}