According to Ukrinform’s report, this is stated in the investigation into the “Important Stories” publication, which also included journalists from Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian, Washington Post, Paper Trail Media and other publications.

According to the investigation, the starting point was the transfer of an archive of documents related to “Vulkan” to the journalists of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A few days after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an unidentified source allegedly contacted the German newspaper and said he wanted to hand over the documents.

“Because of the events in Ukraine, I decided to pass on this information to you,” said the person named.

According to the source, behind the game (Main Directorate of the General Staff – Russian military intelligence) and the FSB is the company “Vulkan”.

The Vulkan company employs more than 130 people, and its turnover in 2021 slightly exceeded one billion rubles. Its founders are Anton Markov and Oleksandr Irzhavskyi. As can be seen from the documents of the company reviewed by journalists, its customers were indeed the Russian foreign intelligence service, the Ministry of Defense and various departments of the FSB.

One of the biggest projects that Vulkan implemented with the code “Amezit” at the request of the Ministry of Defense was the development of a software complex that could monitor all Internet users in a certain area, blocking their access to certain areas. sites and, conversely, promote materials powered by bots.

With the help of the program, allegedly, an employee of the Ministry of Defense can create hundreds of bots on various social networks with one click, and then “assign” various tasks to them. The authors of the study claim to have discovered several such bots and tracked the campaigns they participated in.

Among other things, it was about the campaign against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s opponent in the 2016 US presidential election. Bots created by “Vulkan” supplemented with information that one of the articles allegedly put Clinton in danger. Experts interviewed by journalists assumed that “Amezite” was created for use abroad, especially in Ukraine.

Until now, when talking about the “troll factory” in the context of Russia, as a rule, they called the company “Internet Research Agency”, associated with the founder of PMV “Wagner” Evgeny Prigozhin. He is suspected of interfering in the 2016 election in the United States.