Sewers

The first group of Russians to be sent to Bolivia began to form in January, said a political strategist who knows the circumstances of sending the mission. Rosatom first hired people who had experience with regional electoral campaigns in Russia, and then recruited specialists with knowledge of Spanish to help the spin doctors, describes another source. The spin doctors joked that they were going to fight for the cocaine market, says a friend of the political analysts, but in fact Moscow gave them a different objective.



“Social media is like a sewer, ” Morales said during the campaign. Indeed, social networks gave the Bolivian leader a lot of difficulties. When in the summer it became clear that the authorities were late in fighting the massive Amazon fires and the situation led to the public unrest, Morales suddenly appeared on television dressed like a firefighter.

Photo: tellerreport.com

Social media users responded to the president with memes depicting Morales with a water pistol in his hands. Russian specialists had to work within this “sewer.” All of The Project’s sources for this story claim that the group’s main purpose was to work on the Internet. In particular, they placed social media posts mentioning the theses of the Morales’ programme “Bolivia for everyone” (“Una Bolivia para toda la gente”) and were engaged in “black PR campaigns” against Morales’ critics, says the political consultant with strong knowledge of the mission’s details.

The Russian political strategists had been in La Paz since at least June 4. On that day, political strategist Vladimir Ryabinin posted on his Facebook the first photo from the city. And after that, he kept publishing photos from Bolivia, up until September 25.

Ryabinin was among the group of about 10 strategists from Russia who ended up going to work in Bolivia. This estimate was given by a political strategist who knows the details of the mission.). The rest are mostly consultants who at various times helped the Russian authorities with the elections in the cities of Samara and Yekaterinburg. Among others, they included Alexander Sheremetev, a spin doctor who helped the United Russia candidate from Yekaterinburg to win the most recent elections in the State Duma.

Alexander Sheremetev

Another consultant who worked in Bolivia is Valery Solovyov. He is the founder of the “Internet agitation agency,” the entity that previously interacted with the Kremlin multiple times. Among other things, the agitation agency worked on the recent successful election campaign of St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov, including working with fake accounts in social media as The Project previously reported.

Valery Solovyov (on the left)

In Bolivia, Solovyov was also responsible for the use of “The Prism” system, according to his friend. “The Prism” has been used by Kremlin officials starting in the early 2010s, when they realized that it is necessary to monitor the blogosphere. This software produced by the company Medialogia “analyzes the interest of the blogosphere to certain problems and warns of possible reputational risks, ” according to Medialogia’s website. A source close to the management of Medialogia heard about its negotiations with Bolivia to supply the system to that country. A company spokesperson told The Project that “The Prism” has a Spanish-language version, but declined to answer a question about working in Bolivia.

Vladimir Ryabinin

The main political strategists in the group returned to Moscow by October, not waiting for the voting day. In conversations with their acquaintances, they complained that the work was difficult because of disagreements in Morales’ staff. Political strategists made a report on the results of the mission. “They said the report would go to the presidential administration, “one of their familiar colleagues said.