To some Russians, Friday’s indictment means vindication.
Activists, journalists and former employees have been working for years to shed light on the St. Petersburg troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency. While the organization is most famous for its role in the 2016 U.S. election, it has also sought to manipulate public opinion inside Russia, according to Russian news reports.
The Internet Research Agency has operated with impunity despite a mounting number of Russian investigative reports showing that employees created fake online personas to influence debates online. On Friday in Washington, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III delivered an indictment of the organization and 13 people associated with it that seemed to validate much of that reporting.
Friday’s news broke late in the evening in St. Petersburg, but one of the former troll-factory employees, Lyudmila Savchuk, agreed to talk on the phone at 2 a.m. local time on Saturday morning. She told The Post that the Mueller indictment represented “huge progress” toward naming and shaming the people involved.
Source : washingtonpost
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