Sergey Polozov, a 31-year-old Web designer, is one of 13 Russians indicted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller in Feb. 2018, for fraudulent activities related to U.S. accounts. In a new interview with BBC Russia, Polozov dismissed the charges, saying his work for the Internet Research Association “was never in English and never had any apparent overarching aims, let alone geopolitical designs.”
The indictment (read it here) is, to my mind, the single strongest body of evidence to support the idea that the Trump campaign conspired with Russian state actors to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The indictment states:
Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact, they were controlled by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real U.S. persons to post on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants’ means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system, including the presidential election of 2016.
Trump-Russia skeptics can again say, correctly, that none of the charges brought by Mueller proved collusion. But the IRA indictment is the best evidence of a collaborative effort, though we don’t know about the Trump campaign side of the story.
Curious
So what does one of the indicted men have to say? Sergey Polozov’s denials had a curious quality, notes Meduza, an independent Russian news site.
He told the BBC that he would be proud to have played a role in Russia’s U.S. election meddling, if he believed it had actually happened. ….Throughout the interview, Polozov simultaneously denies and celebrates the IRA’s exploits in American cyberspace. He says he doesn’t believe the IRA ever existed as a coherent project with explicit goals, but he welcomes the idea of a “troll factory” dedicated to Russia’s geopolitical agenda, “broadcasting positivity, not negativity.”
So while Polozov doesn’t do anything to confirm collusion between the Trump campaign and the IRA, his testimony hardly excludes the possibility.
The BBC reports note one more finding from the interview.
While maintaining the IRA’s scattered, virtually nonexistent structure, Polozov also acknowledges that he worked closely with Mikhail Burchik, whom U.S. officials have identified as a senior executive at the IRA who participated directly in its interference efforts. Polozov also verifies the authenticity of emails leaked in 2014 by the “Anonymous International” group, which mention multiple IRA-linked figures later indicted by the U.S. Justice Department.
Interview in Russian
