A former manager of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian “troll factory” and propaganda operation accused of meddling in the 2016 election, has lived in the United States for the past two and a half months, according to a Russian news outlet.



Agata Burdonova, 31, was an English-language specialist who worked as a manager at the IRA, according to TV Rain, an independent Russian news agency that has broken a number of stories about the IRA. She moved to Bellevue, Washington, on Dec. 7, and has thoroughly documented her move on her social media accounts. She has posted pictures of her boarding pass and Russian passport, a selfie with her husband at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and photos of Seattle’s Space Needle, a suburban American neighborhood, and several Washington parks.

TV Rain said she denied that she had worked for the IRA and refused to comment on her move to the United States. She did not immediately respond to questions sent by BuzzFeed News to her accounts on Facebook and on a similar Russian social media platform, VK.

Burdonova is not among the 13 Russians that the Department of Justice’s special counsel has accused of violating a series of US laws in connection to the 2016 election. According to IRA documents obtained by the special counsel, one of the IRA’s stated objectives was to conduct “information warfare against the United States of America.”

Her former coworkers told TV Rain that Burdonova worked under Katarina Aistova, who was interviewed by the New York Times about the IRA in 2015 before she became the head of its media department. Burdonova posted a picture of herself with Aistova on Facebook and on VK and said she’d had a farewell party as she prepared to fly to the other side of the world.