Yevgeny Prigozhin systematically hired people to pretend to be victims of Ukrainian forces during interviews. That is what former employees of his media empire Patriot say, which the ex-Wagner leader closed after the failed mutiny at the end of June. For example, an interview is said to have appeared in 2014 in which a hired woman claims to have seen the crucifixion of a three-year-old child by Ukrainian nationalists.
Patriot included news media such as ‘RIA FAN’, ‘Politics Today’, ‘Economics Today’, ‘Nevskiye Novosti’ and ‘Narodniye Novosti’. For a long time, the employees had to keep quiet about what went on behind the scenes, but recently they revealed the details in an interview with ‘Bumaga’, an independent Russian media outlet.
The most notable revelations concerned Prigozhin’s propaganda techniques. An RIA FAN journalist said people interviewed about the “genocide” that Russia said took place in 2014 in the eastern region of Donbas were given instructions on what to say. They were coached by someone standing next to the camera and given advice on how to deliver their pre-rehearsed text as realistically as possible.
“Most of the people portrayed as victims of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in such interviews were hired stand-ins,” the journalist said. “They repeated their rehearsed texts several times to be able to wipe away a tear. They also received instructions off camera to speak more slowly or to restart the recording.”
Crucifixion of toddler
An example of such a staged interview is one from July 2014, in which a woman speaks who claims to have witnessed the crucifixion of a toddler. However, several Ukrainian and Russian bloggers and journalists were quick to prove that the woman was an actress and that the story was false.
LOOK. This interview on Russian television in which a woman tells how a child was crucified turned out to be a hoax
A similar interview was broadcast a year later. The Russian TV channel ‘NTV’ then claimed that a 10-year-old girl had died as a result of Ukrainian forces in the east of the country. A ‘BBC’ journalist on the spot was then able to prove that this story was not true either. But the idea among the Russian public that a genocide was taking place in the Donbas had meanwhile been launched. That alleged genocide was also one of the reasons Putin cited for invading Ukraine last year.
According to one of the Patriot employees, newcomers to the company were thoroughly questioned by the security services using a lie detector test. With this they wanted to keep out drug addicts and sympathizers of the Russian opposition, especially supporters of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny. In addition, a lot of security measures applied in the company, one of the former employees told ‘Bumaga’. For example, there were “electronic passes, cameras hung everywhere and all recordings of computer screens were sent to the security service”.
Information noise
Everyone who worked at this “troll factory,” as one of them called it, knew that Prigozhin’s goal was to create “information noise” that was supposed to “hidden the real agenda.” “Some journalists had to distract people with stories about problems in other countries, news about local celebrities or a review of a film. Other journalists had to brainwash people with all sorts of stories about the Special Operations Zone (Russia calls the war in Ukraine a ‘special operation’, ed.).”
The former employees have been out of work since the company closed. The head of the Russian Union of Journalists in St. Petersburg is said to have offered his help to help the employees find new jobs.
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