POSITION
Executive Director
COMPANY
Internet Research Agency
COUNTRY
Russia
AGE
46 years
Website
SCENE
Mikhail Burchik is believed by many in the US to be the man running the massive troll operation out of St Petersburgh in Russia. In 2017 New York Times identified him as the man behind the army of trolls attempting to meddle in the US elections and is most probably the man behind the tweets spreading fake news and trolling remain campaigners on Facebook and Twitter.
In 2018 he was identified as one of thirteen Russians who interfered with the 2016 presidential election. Burchik is thought to have been the executive director of the Internet Research Agency, a known major Russian “troll farm”, a claim which he denies. An indictment released by the US government inferred that he became the executive director of the Agency in 2014.
According to the indictment he was in charge of hundreds of employees using false identities on social media to spread propaganda to support Trump. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh also discovered close to 400 accounts run by Russian operatives, which were tweeting ‘bogus tweets’ supporting Brexit. Burchik denies having any involvement with these operations. Russian magazine RBC reported he was an I.T. consultant who had launched a couple of companies.