A former Russian internet “troll” hired to promote political views online is suing her ex-employer in an attempt to draw attention to the country’s “information war” , a news report said on Friday.



The grounds for the lawsuit filed by Lyudmila Savchuk, which is expected to be heard by a St Petersburg city court next month, is the employer’s failure to provide any labour contract or other paperwork supporting her hiring and eventual dismissal, Kommersant reported.

Savchuk said she was fired after speaking to the media about her employer, Internet Research, which she described as part of Russia’s “troll factory”.

Internet Research is reported to be linked to another company with a similar name, Internet Research Agency, which in the spring merged with a firm called New Technologies, whose official registration documents identify it as a construction company.

“The ‘troll factory’ operates based on very weird schemes, but all those firms are connected to each other, even though they are separate legal entities,” Savchuk was quoted as saying.

Since her dismissal, Savchuk has been organising a public movement against online trolling called Informatsionny Mir – a name that can be translated both as “Information World” and “Information Peace”.

“There are both opposition activists and supporters of the government among us, but we all believe that such methods of information war are unacceptable,” she said.

Internet Research was not immediately available for comment.

Lawyer Darya Sukhikh from St Petersburg-based human rights organisation Kommanda-29 (Team-29), which is representing Savchuk, told Kommersant that the lawsuit was “a pretext to force this rather secretive organisation into public view”, allowing lawyers to demand documentation.

Savchuk said she was hired in December after responding to a job advert. She said she had been asked to work 12-hour shifts posting political comments on various websites for a monthly salary of 41,000 roubles ($778), which was paid in cash until her dismissal in March.