“Mikhail - the ballet guy?”
No, Colonel Mikhail Bystrov, a police official who operates the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency. I’m wondering whether or not, for example, he also has affiliations with the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), FSB (Federal Security Service), or otherwise? There has to be some reason why he was hired by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is Putin’s owner-agent for the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency.
The St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency just seems like such a tiny operation.
In an internet with hundreds of millions of users, a group of a couple hundred trolls would have nowhere near the effect of having something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
working to promote certain interests.
I notice this story on the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency appeared in DU last month.
It also appeared in Atlantic Monthly last November, someone posted it to FR, then the thread was pulled.