In its first headquarters, a blocky, four-story building in Saint Petersburg, at 55 Savushkina Street, the Agency’s dozens of twentysomethings learned to “troll” critics of Putin and journalists who delved too deeply into what the agency did. It didn’t take them long to perfect the art form. As Putin and his Chef had learned, it is easy to make a critic miserable in the Twitter age. And the Internet Research Agency performed the task well—growing to 80 employees with outsized influence online.
