134-590: The Internet Research Agency ( IRA ; Russian : Агентство интернет-исследований , romanized : Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy ), also known as Glavset (Russian: Главсеть ), and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino (Russian: ольгинские тролли ) or Kremlinbots ( Russian : кремлеботы ), was a Russian company which was engaged in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. It
268-649: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
402-510: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
536-861: A 2018 Kommersant article, Yaroslov Ignatovsky (Russian: Ярослав Ринатович Игнатовский ; born 1983, Leningrad) heads Politgen (Russian: "Политген" ) and is a political strategist that has coordinated the trolls' efforts for Prigozhin. According to the testimonies of the investigative journalists and former employees of the offices, the main topics for posts included: The IRA has also leveraged trolls to erode trust in American political and media institutions and showcase certain politicians as incompetent. Journalists have written that themes of trolling were consistent with those of other Russian propaganda outlets in topics and timing. Technical points used by trolls were taken mainly from content disseminated by RT (formerly Russia Today). A 2015 BBC News investigation identified
670-585: A 2019 report by Oxford researchers including sociologist Philip N. Howard , social media played a major role in political polarization in the United States, due to computational propaganda – "the use of automation, algorithms, and big-data analytics to manipulate public life"—such as the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories. The researchers highlighted the role of the Russian Internet Research Agency in attempts to undermine democracy in
804-635: A city' in Russian, and is often also used metonymically in international politics to refer to the Government of the Russian Federation . Likewise, during the Cold War , it referred to the Government of the Soviet Union , which operated out of the city in the erstwhile Russian SFSR . The term " Kremlinology " is related to the metonym and refers to the study of Soviet and Russian politics. Largely open to
938-584: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin or simply the Kremlin is a fortified complex in Moscow , Russia . Located in the centre of the country's capital city, it is the best known of the kremlins (Russian citadels ) and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and
1072-527: A heroic scale, which involved the demolition of several churches and palaces, as well as a portion of the Kremlin wall. After the preparations were over, construction was delayed due to lack of funds. Several years later the architect Matvey Kazakov supervised the reconstruction of the dismantled sections of the wall and of some structures of the Chudov Monastery and built the spacious and luxurious Offices of
1206-467: A key role in a series of mass-scale disinformation campaigns, producing nearly 40'000 content units (memes, images, comments) over 4 months, used in specific campaigns targeted at governments of France, Poland, Germany and Ukraine. More than 1,000 paid bloggers and commenters reportedly worked only in a single building at Savushkina Street in 2015. Many other employees work remotely. According to BuzzFeed News , more than 600 people were generally employed in
1340-479: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
1474-572: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
SECTION 10
#17328595631801608-607: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
1742-516: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
1876-608: A troll factory employee. The citizen-journalism site Bellingcat identified the team from Olgino as the real authors of a video attributed to the Azov Battalion in which masked soldiers threaten the Netherlands for organizing the referendum on the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement . In the beginning of April 2014 there began an organized online campaign to shift public opinion in
2010-588: Is 126 comments and two posts per account. Each blogger is in charge of three accounts. Employees at the Olgino office earned 25,000 Russian rubles per month (at the time roughly US$ 651.41); those at the Savushkina Street office earned approximately 40,000 Russian rubles. In May 2014, Fontanka.ru described schemes for plundering the federal budget, intended to go toward the trolling organization. In 2017 another whistleblower said that with bonuses and long working hours
2144-527: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
2278-475: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
2412-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
2546-593: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
2680-485: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
2814-487: Is between 3.5 and 6.5 metres (11 and 21 ft). Originally there were eighteen Kremlin towers , but their number increased to twenty in the 17th century. All but three of the towers are square in plan. The highest tower is the Troitskaya , which was built to its present height of 80 metres (260 ft) in 1495. Most towers were originally crowned with wooden tents. The extant brick tents with strips of colored tiles date to
SECTION 20
#17328595631802948-613: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
3082-446: Is considered to be linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin , head of the holding company Concord Management and Consulting . The "Trolls of Olgino" are considered to be his project. As of October 2014, the company belonged to Mikhail Bystrov, who had been the head of the police station at Moscow district of Saint Petersburg . Russian media point out that according to documents, published by hackers from Anonymous International , Concord Management
3216-489: Is directly involved with trolling administration through the agency. Researchers cite e-mail correspondence, in which Concord Management gives instructions to trolls and receives reports on accomplished work. According to journalists, Concord Management organized banquets in the Kremlin and also cooperated with Voentorg and the Russian Ministry of Defence . Despite links to Alexei Soskovets, Nadejda Orlova, deputy head of
3350-455: Is just a way to steal budget money. Leonid Volkov, a politician working for Alexei Navalny 's Anti-Corruption Foundation, suggests that the point of sponsoring paid Internet trolling is to make the Internet so distasteful that ordinary people are not willing to participate. The Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax on 11 September 2014, was the work of Internet Research Agency. According to
3484-563: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
3618-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
3752-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
3886-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
4020-576: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
4154-637: Is the oldest extant structure in the Kremlin and the whole of Moscow. The northern corner of the Kremlin is occupied by the Arsenal , which was built for Peter the Great in 1701. The southwestern section of the Kremlin holds the Armoury building . Built in 1851 to a Renaissance Revival design, it is currently a museum housing Russian state Regalia and Diamond Fund . The haloalkaliphilic methylotrophic bacterium Methylophaga muralis (first called Methylophaga murata )
Internet Research Agency - Misplaced Pages Continue
4288-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
4422-461: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
4556-966: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
4690-527: The Bolsheviks in 1918. The Soviet government moved from Petrograd (present-day Saint Petersburg) to Moscow on 12 March 1918. Vladimir Lenin selected the Kremlin Senate as his residence. Joseph Stalin also had his personal rooms in the Kremlin. He was eager to remove all the "relics of the tsarist regime" from his headquarters. Golden eagles on the towers were replaced by shining Kremlin stars , while
4824-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
4958-555: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
5092-448: The Mongols in 1237 and rebuilt in oak by Ivan I Kalita in 1339. Dmitri Donskoi replaced the oak palisade with a strong citadel of white limestone in 1366–1368 on the basic foundations of the current walls; this fortification withstood a siege by Khan Tokhtamysh . Dmitri's son Vasily I resumed construction of churches and cloisters in the Kremlin. The newly built Cathedral of
5226-532: The Patriarchal Chambers and the Terem Palace . The existing Kremlin walls and towers were built by Italian masters from 1485 to 1495. The irregular triangle of the Kremlin wall encloses an area of 275,000 square metres (2,960,000 sq ft). Its overall length is 2,235 metres (2,444 yards), but the height ranges from 5 to 19 metres (16 to 62 ft), depending on the terrain. The wall's thickness
5360-664: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
5494-576: The Time of Troubles , the Kremlin was held by the Polish forces for two years, between 21 September 1610 and 26 October 1612. The Kremlin's liberation by the volunteer army of prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin from Nizhny Novgorod paved the way for the election of Mikhail Romanov as the new tsar. During his reign and that of his son Alexis and grandson Feodor , the eleven-domed Upper Saviour Cathedral, Armorial Gate , Terem Palace , Amusement Palace and
Internet Research Agency - Misplaced Pages Continue
5628-575: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
5762-638: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
5896-933: The United States Intelligence Community – Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections – described the agency as a troll farm : "The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close ally of [Vladimir] Putin with ties to Russian intelligence," commenting that "they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—[and] started to advocate for candidate Trump as early as December 2015." The agency employed fake accounts registered on major social networking sites , discussion boards, online newspaper sites, and video hosting services to promote
6030-608: The Western world in a way that would be useful for Russian authorities regarding the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014 . Hacked and leaked documents from that time contain instructions for commenters posting at the websites of Fox News , The Huffington Post , TheBlaze , Politico , and WorldNetDaily . The requirement for the working hours for the trolls is also mentioned: 50 comments under news articles per day. Each blogger had to manage six accounts on Facebook, post at least three posts every day, and participate twice in
6164-421: The "Lakhta Trolls" (Russian: Лахта Тролли ). Novaya Gazeta reported that, according to Alexey Soskovets, head of the office in Olgino, North-Western Service Agency was hiring employees for similar projects in Moscow and other cities in 2013. In 2024 an investigation by several media outlets revealed documents leaked from "Agency of Social Design" ( Russian : Агентство Социального Проектированиа ) which played
6298-581: The 1090s which was unearthed by Soviet archaeologists in the area. The Vyatichi built a fortified structure (or "grad") on the hill where the Neglinnaya River flowed into the Moskva River . Up to the 14th century, the site was known as the "grad of Moscow". The word "Kremlin" was first recorded in 1331 (though etymologist Max Vasmer mentions an earlier appearance in 1320 ). The grad was greatly extended by Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy in 1156, destroyed by
6432-599: The 1680s. Cathedral Square is the heart of the Kremlin. It is surrounded by six buildings, including three cathedrals . The Cathedral of the Dormition was completed in 1479 to be the main church of Moscow and where all the Tsars were crowned. The massive limestone façade, capped with its five golden cupolas , was the design of Aristotele Fioravanti . Several important metropolitans and patriarchs are buried there, including Peter and Makarii . The gilded, three-domed Cathedral of
6566-725: The 1750s to the design of Francesco Rastrelli . The elaborate Baroque structure was demolished, as was the nearby church of St. John the Precursor, built by Aloisio the New in 1508 in place of the first church constructed in Moscow. The architect Konstantin Thon was commissioned to replace them with the Grand Kremlin Palace , which was to rival the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in its dimensions and in
6700-508: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
6834-481: The 55 Savushkina Street location "a couple of months ago" because "it was giving the entire building a bad reputation." A possibly related organization, FAN or Federal News Agency, was located in the building. The New York Times article describes various experiences reported by former employees of the Internet Research Agency at the Savushkina Street location. It also describes several disruptive hoaxes in
SECTION 50
#17328595631806968-655: The Annunciation was completed next in 1489, only to be reconstructed to a nine-domed design a century later. On the south-east of the square is the much larger Cathedral of the Archangel Michael (1508), where almost all the Muscovite monarchs from Ivan Kalita to Ivan V of Russia are interred. Also Boris Godunov was originally buried there but was moved to the Trinity Monastery . There are two domestic churches of
7102-434: The Annunciation was painted by Theophanes the Greek , Andrei Rublev , and Prokhor in 1406. The Chudov Monastery was founded by Dmitri's tutor, Metropolitan Alexis ; while his widow, Eudoxia , established the Ascension Convent in 1397. Grand Prince Ivan III organised the reconstruction of the Kremlin, inviting a number of skilled architects from Renaissance Italy , including Petrus Antonius Solarius , who designed
7236-412: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
7370-472: The Committee for Youth Policy in Saint Petersburg, disputed a connection between her institution and the trolling offices. Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro , who reported extensively on the pro-Russian trolling activities in Finland, was targeted by an organized campaign of hate, disinformation and harassment. 59°59′42.7″N 30°07′49.7″E / 59.995194°N 30.130472°E / 59.995194; 30.130472 As reported by Novaya Gazeta , in
7504-409: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
7638-468: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
7772-408: The Justice Department. On 1 July 2023, it was announced that the Internet Research Agency would be shut down following the aftermath of the Wagner Group rebellion . In Leningrad Oblast in the late 1970s, Vladimir Putin's first KGB post was with the 5th Department , which countered dissidents with disinformation using active measures , and was strongly supported by Filipp Bobkov and the head of
7906-457: The KGB Yuri Andropov , who believed in "stamping out dissent". Revealed on 16 August 2012 in an article by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, the website for the company Medialogia offered a system known as Prisma terminals ( Russian : Терминалы «Призма» ) which, according to Farit Khusnoyarov, Prism could track for the Kremlin in near real time the stand-alone blog platforms and social networks of nearly 60 million sites and could analyze
8040-589: The Kremlin's interests in domestic and foreign policy including Ukraine and the Middle East as well as attempting to influence the 2016 United States presidential election . More than 1,000 employees reportedly worked in a single building of the agency in 2015. The extent to which the agency tried to influence public opinion using social media became better known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed News article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year. The Internet Research Agency gained more attention by June 2015, when one of its offices
8174-399: The Metropolitans and Patriarchs of Moscow, the Church of the Twelve Apostles (1653–1656) and the exquisite one-domed Church of the Deposition of the Virgin's Robe , built by Pskov artisans from 1484 to 1488 and featuring superb icons and frescoes from 1627 and 1644. The other notable structure is the Ivan the Great Bell Tower on the north-east corner of the square, which is said to mark
SECTION 60
#17328595631808308-411: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
8442-428: The Olgino factory as the most likely producer of a September 2015 "Saiga 410K review" video where an actor posing as a U.S. soldier shoots at a book that turns out to be a Quran , which sparked outrage. BBC News found among other irregularities that the soldier's uniform is not used by the U.S. military and is easily purchased in Russia, and that the actor filmed was most likely a bartender from Saint Petersburg related to
8576-415: The Palace of Facets are linked by the Grand Kremlin Palace . This was commissioned by Nicholas I in 1838. The largest structure in the Kremlin, it cost 11 million rubles to build and more than one billion dollars to renovate in the 1990s. It contains dazzling reception halls, a ceremonial red staircase, private apartments of the tsars, and the lower story of the Resurrection of Lazarus church (1393), which
8710-418: The Polish edition of Newsweek expressed suspicion that Russia was employing people to "bombard" its website with pro-Russian comments on Ukraine-related articles. Poland's governmental computer emergency response team later confirmed that pro-Russia commentary had flooded Polish Internet portals at the start of the Ukrainian crisis. German-language media websites were also flooded with pro-Russia comments in
8844-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
8978-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
9112-420: The Senate , since adapted for use as the principal workplace of the President of Russia. During the Imperial period, from the early 18th and until the late 19th century, the Kremlin walls were traditionally painted white, in accordance with fashion. French forces occupied the Kremlin from 2 September to 11 October 1812, following the French invasion of Russia . When Napoleon retreated from Moscow, he ordered
9246-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
9380-403: The US and Europe, such as the Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax , that may be attributable to the Internet Research Agency or similar Russian-based organizations. 59°59′41.5068″N 30°14′44.4588″E / 59.994863000°N 30.245683000°E / 59.994863000; 30.245683000 Reported by the Russian online newspaper DP.ru in December 2017, the office moved from
9514-569: The US and exacerbate existing political divisions. The most prominent methods of misinformation were "organic posting, not advertisements", and influence operation activity increased after the 2016 and was not limited to the 2016 election. Examples of efforts included "campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016", "encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational", and "spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across
9648-460: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
9782-682: The approved-by-Russian-authorities strategy of public consciousness manipulation through new media to Vyacheslav Volodin , first deputy of the Vladimir Putin Presidential Administration of Russia . Journalists have written that Alexey Soskovets , who had participated in the Russian youth political community, was directly connected to the office in Olgino, and that his company, North-Western Service Agency, won 17 or 18 (according to different sources) contracts for organizing celebrations, forums and sport competitions for authorities of Saint Petersburg and that Soskovets' company
9916-432: The beginning of 2016, Ukraine's state-owned news agency Ukrinform claimed to expose a system of bots in social networks, which called for violence against the Ukrainian government and for starting "The Third Maidan". They reported that the organizer of this system is the former anti-Ukrainian combatant Sergiy Zhuk from Donbas . He allegedly performed his Internet activity from Vnukovo District in Moscow. In March 2014,
10050-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
10184-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
10318-562: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
10452-593: The enclosing Kremlin Wall along with the Kremlin towers . Within the complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace , which served as the royal residence of the Emperor of Russia . It is now the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation . The Kremlin overlooks the Moskva River to the south, Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square to the east, and Alexander Garden to the west. The name kremlin means 'fortress within
10586-669: The end of August 2013, the following message appeared in social networks: "Internet operators wanted! Job at chic office in Olgino !!! (st. Staraya Derevnia), salary 25960 per month (USD$ 780 as of 2013). Task: posting comments at profile sites in the Internet, writing thematic posts, blogs, social networks. Reports via screenshots. Individual schedule [...] Payment every week, 1180 per shift (from 8.00 to 16.00, from 10.30 to 18.30, from 14.00 to 22.00). PAYMENTS EVERY WEEK AND FREE MEALS!!! Official job placement or according to contract (at will). Tuition possible." As reported by media and former employees,
10720-566: The eve of the elections, to counter dissidents in Russia. Others using Prisma include Sergei Naryshkin 's office in the State Duma , senior officials at the Main Center for Communications and Information Security (Russian: Главный центр связи и информационной безопасности ) in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) senior officials at Moscow City Hall and employees close to the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin . The Internet Research Agency
10854-617: The exact center of Moscow and resemble a burning candle. Completed in 1600, it is 81 metres (266 feet) high. Until the Russian Revolution, it was the tallest structure in the city, as construction of buildings taller than that was forbidden. Its 21 bells would sound the alarm if any enemy was approaching. The upper part of the structure was destroyed by the French during the Napoleonic Invasion in 1812 and has been rebuilt. The Tsar bell ,
10988-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
11122-451: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
11256-506: The four-story building at 55 Savushkina Street to Lakhta on four floors at Optikov street [ ru ] , 4 building 3 (Russian: Санкт-Петербург: улица Оптикова, 4 корпус 3 ) near Staroderevenskaya street [ ru ] (Russian: Стародеревенская улица ) in the Lakhta-2 business center (Russian: «Лахта-2» ) on 1 February 2018. Beginning in February 2018, they were also known as
11390-617: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
11524-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
11658-406: The group discussions. Other employees had to manage 10 accounts on Twitter, publishing 50 tweets every day. Journalists concluded that Igor Osadchiy was a probable leader of the project, and the campaign itself was run by Internet Research Agency Ltd. Osadchiy denied his connection to the agency. The company was also one of the main sponsors of an anti-Western exhibition Material Evidence . In
11792-413: The largest bell in the world, stands on a pedestal next to the tower. The oldest secular structure still standing is Ivan III 's Palace of Facets (1491), which holds the imperial thrones. The next oldest is the first home of the royal family, the Terem Palace . The original Terem Palace was also commissioned by Ivan III, but most of the existing palace was built in the 17th century. The Terem Palace and
11926-409: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
12060-700: The new Kremlin wall and its towers, and Marcus Ruffus who designed the new palace for the prince. It was during his reign that three extant cathedrals of the Kremlin, the Deposition Church, and the Palace of Facets were constructed. The highest building of the city and Muscovite Russia was the Ivan the Great Bell Tower , built in 1505–1508 and augmented to its present height in 1600. The Kremlin walls as they now appear were built between 1485 and 1495. Spasskie gates of
12194-516: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
12328-534: The office in Olgino , Primorskiy district , St. Peterburg had existed and had been functioning since September 2013. It was situated in a white cottage, 15 minutes by an underground railway from Staraya Derevnia station, opposite Olgino railway station. Workplaces for troll-employees were placed in basement rooms. 59°59′03.5″N 30°16′19.1″E / 59.984306°N 30.271972°E / 59.984306; 30.271972 According to Russian online newspaper DP.ru , several months before October 2014
12462-624: The office in Olgino. Information of the work being conducted at the Agency comes in part from interviews with former employees. In February 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin , the head of the private military company Wagner Group , stated that he founded the IRA: "I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time." The admission came months after Prigozhin had admitted to Russian interference in U.S. elections . Russian newspaper Vedomosti links
12596-423: The office moved from Olgino to a four-story building at 55 Savushkina Street, Primorskiy district , St. Peterburg . As reported by journalists, the building is officially an uncompleted construction and stayed as such as of March 2015. A New York Times investigative reporter was told that the Internet Research Agency had shortened its name to "Internet Research," and as of June 2015 had been asked to leave
12730-627: The opulence of its interiors. The palace was constructed in 1839–1849, followed by the re-building of the Kremlin Armoury in 1851. After 1851 the Kremlin changed little until the Russian Revolution of 1917 . The only new features added during this period were the Monument to Alexander II and a stone cross marking the spot where in 1905 Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia was assassinated by Ivan Kalyayev . These monuments were destroyed by
12864-551: The original interiors of the Grand Kremlin Palace, which were altered during Stalin's rule. Overall, during the Soviet rule (1917–1991), 28 out of 54 historic buildings in the Kremlin were destroyed (among them 17 out of 31 churches and cathedrals), most of them centuries-old. The State Kremlin Palace (alias Kremlin Palace of Congresses), was commissioned by Nikita Khrushchev as a modern arena for Communist Party meetings and
12998-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
13132-455: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
13266-476: The palace of Patriarch Nikon were built. Following the death of Alexis's son, Feodor, and the Moscow Uprising of 1682 , Tsar Peter escaped with much difficulty from the Kremlin and as a result developed a dislike for it. Three decades later in 1703, Peter abandoned the residence of his forefathers for his new capital, Saint Petersburg . The Golden Hall, a throne room with murals painted probably after 1547,
13400-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
13534-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
13668-565: The political spectrum." Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
13802-455: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
13936-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
14070-475: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
14204-466: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
14338-498: The public, the Kremlin offers supervised tours; the accompanying Moscow Kremlin Museums reportedly attracted 1,024,610 visitors in 2023. The site had been continuously inhabited by Finnic peoples (especially the Meryans ) since the 2nd century BCE . The Slavs occupied the south-western portion of Borovitsky Hill as early as the 11th century, as evidenced by a metropolitan seal from
14472-500: The reign of Ivan the Terrible . The same tsar also renovated some of his grandfather's palaces, added a new palace and cathedral for his sons, and endowed the Trinity metochion inside the Kremlin. The metochion was administrated by the Trinity Monastery and contained the graceful tower church of St. Sergius , which was described by foreigners as one of the finest in the country. During
14606-469: The remainder of the reign of Alexander I , several ancient structures were renovated in a fanciful neo-Gothic style, but many others, including all the buildings of the Trinity metochion, were condemned as "disused" or "dilapidated" and were torn down. On visiting Moscow for his coronation festivities, Tsar Nicholas I was not satisfied with the Grand Palace (alias Winter Palace), which had been erected in
14740-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
14874-434: The salary can reach 80,000 rubles. An employee interviewed by The Washington Post described the work: I immediately felt like a character in the book 1984 by George Orwell — a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line. According to
15008-417: The spring of 2014. In late May 2014, the hacker group Anonymous International began publishing documents received from hacked emails of Internet Research Agency managers. In May–June 2014, Internet trolls invaded news media sites and massively posted pro-Russian comments in broken English. In March 2015 a service enabling censorship of sources of anti-Ukrainian propaganda in social networks inside Ukraine
15142-675: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
15276-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
15410-445: The tone of the statements of each of these sources with a lag of several minutes or given as an estimated error of 2–3% almost in real time. The article called the terminals Volodin's Prism (Russian: Призма Володина ) for Vyacheslav Volodin . After the Snow revolution following the 4 December 2011 Russian legislative elections , Volodin actively used his Prism terminal, which he received on
15544-482: The trolls' office earlier, in June 2014. Each commentator has a daily quota of 100 comments. Trolls took shifts writing mainly in blogs on LiveJournal and Vkontakte , about subjects along the propaganda lines assigned. Included among the employees are artists who draw political cartoons. They work for 12 hours every other two days. A blogger's quota is ten posts per shift, each post at least 750 characters. A commenter's norm
15678-770: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
15812-506: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
15946-640: The wall near Lenin's Mausoleum was turned into the Kremlin Wall Necropolis . The Chudov Monastery and Ascension Convent , with their 16th-century cathedrals , were demolished to make room for the military school. The Little Nicholas Palace and the old Saviour Cathedral were pulled down as well. During the Second World War , in order to confuse the German pilots, the towers were repainted with different colors and covered with wooden tents. Every roof
16080-418: The wall still bear a dedication in Latin praising Petrus Antonius Solarius for the design. After construction of the new kremlin walls and churches was complete, the monarch decreed that no structures should be built in the immediate vicinity of the citadel. The Kremlin was separated from the walled merchant town ( Kitay-gorod ) by a 30-meter-wide moat, over which Saint Basil's Cathedral was constructed during
16214-553: The whole Kremlin to be blown up. The Kremlin Arsenal , several portions of the Kremlin Wall and several wall towers were destroyed by explosions and the Faceted Chamber and other churches were damaged by fire. Explosions continued for three days, from 21 to 23 October 1812. However, rain damaged the fuses , and the damage was less severe than intended. Restoration works were undertaken in 1816–1819, supervised by Osip Bove . During
16348-554: Was built within the Kremlin walls 1959–1961. Externally the palace is faced with white marble and the windows are tinted and reflective. The construction replaced several heritage buildings, including the old neo-classical building of the State Armoury, and some of the rear parts of the Grand Kremlin Palace . The Palace was constructed and integrated into the larger complex of the Great Kremlin Palace with walkways linking it to
16482-458: Was destroyed to make place for the Kremlin Palace, commissioned by Elizabeth of Russia and designed by architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli in 1752. Although still used for coronation ceremonies, the Kremlin was abandoned and neglected until 1773, when Catherine the Great engaged Vasili Bazhenov to build her new residence there. Bazhenov produced a bombastic Neoclassical design on
16616-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
16750-453: Was first isolated from deteriorating marble in the Kremlin. To stop disruptions to traffic caused by motorcades, Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the construction of a helipad in the Kremlin. The helipad was completed in May 2013. The Russian President will now commute back and forth to the Kremlin using a Mil Mi-8 helicopter. Careful consideration was taken in choosing the location of
16884-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
17018-601: Was founded in mid-2013. In 2013, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that Internet Research Agency Ltd's office was in Olgino , a historic district of Saint Petersburg . Uncovered by Anonymous International and made public in June 2014, Vyacheslav Volodin is a strong supporter of the interests of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the trolls at the Internet Research Agency. The terms "Trolls from Olgino" and "Olgino's trolls" (Russian: "Тролли из Ольгино" , "Ольгинские тролли") have become general terms denoting trolls who spread pro-Russian propaganda, not only necessarily those based at
17152-468: Was launched. The United States Justice Department announced the indictment on 16 February 2018, of the Internet Research Agency while also naming more than a dozen individual suspects who allegedly worked there as part of the special counsel's investigation into criminal interference with the 2016 election. Russian bloggers Anton Nosik , Rustem Adagamov , and Dmitriy Aleshkovskiy have said that paid Internet-trolls don't change public opinion. Their usage
17286-615: Was linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin , a former Russian oligarch who was leader of the Wagner Group , and based in Saint Petersburg , Russia. The agency was first mentioned in a 2015 article by Adrian Chen in The New York Times , which detailed its operations, although it gained further attention in when Russian journalist Andrey Zakharov published his investigation into Prigozhin’s "troll factory". The January 2017 report issued by
17420-464: Was painted rusty brown so as to make them indistinguishable from typical roofs in the city. The grounds, paved with cobblestone, were covered up with sand. Tents painted to look like roofs were stretched over the gardens, and the facades of the buildings were also painted. The residence of the Soviet government was closed to tourists until 1955. It was not until the Khrushchev Thaw that the Kremlin
17554-533: Was reopened to foreign visitors. The Kremlin Museums were established in 1961, and the complex was among the first Soviet patrimonies inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1990. Although the current director of the Kremlin Museums, Elena Gagarina ( Yuri Gagarin 's daughter), advocates a full-scale restoration of the destroyed cloisters, recent developments have been confined to expensive restoration of
17688-473: Was reported as having data from fake accounts used for biased Internet trolling . Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks. On 16 February 2018, a United States grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities, including the Internet Research Agency, on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere "with U.S. elections and political processes", according to
17822-433: Was the only participant in half of those bids. In mid-2013 the agency won a tender for providing freight services for participants of Seliger camp. In 2014, according to Russian media, Internet Research Ltd. (Russian: «Интернет исследования» ) was founded in March 2014, and joined IRA's activity. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that this company is a successor of Internet Research Agency Ltd. Internet Research Ltd.
17956-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
#179820