"Fontanka.ru" reported on the launch in Tbilisi of a "reverse troll factory", where opposition journalists and activists who were forced to leave Russia worked.
Other alleged participants include Egor Kuroptev, Vladimir Milov, Anton Mikhalchuk, Pavel Elizarov, Fedor Telin, and Ivan Zhdanov.
They allegedly enter into contracts for the provision of "SMM consulting" services with the Lithuanian organization Reforum, headed by Natalia Arno.
[7] On November 17, the Free Russia Foundation confirmed the creation of the Legion of Elves project, which was nicknamed the "Elven Factory" in the media, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Kuroptev explained that the project aims to create a picture of the world based on objective information, providing different points of view on events.
Anton Mikhalchuk, coordinator of the Legion of Elves, stressed that the social network "VKontakte"[1] is one of the best platforms for disseminating the project's narrative.
According to The Insider, dozens of activists from around the world are involved in the project, most of whom have experience in opposition activities in Russia or have worked in the media.
The authors of the SVTV material claimed that the network of paid commentators engaged in anti-Kremlin propaganda on the Internet belongs to the Anti-Corruption Foundation of Alexei Navalny.
[18] Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov said that he had analyzed the documents published by SVTV and noted that such a volume of reporting would be difficult to forge.
[16][2] Egor Kuroptev, Director of the Center for Strategic Communications of the Free Russia Foundation, responding to a question from TV Rain host Anna Mongayt about whether people are paid to write comments from fake accounts, said that he would neither confirm nor deny this: “There are security issues for hundreds of people who work with us on different projects in different countries.
[16][2] Politician Vladimir Milov commented on the SVTV material on the air of "Dozhd": "Everything he (Svetov) wrote about the FBK bot farm is not true.
And here we are talking about the fact that people on social networks are writing: “Look, Putin stole everything, killed everyone, brought the country to ruin.” That is, there is no lie here.