Putin's new weapon: Internet trolls

Putin’s Alice-in-Wonderland can be wacky, mind boggling, irritating, disgusting, cynical, and incorrigible, but underlying it is a sinister narrative of an alternate reality, cleverly designed to promote Putin’s goals and head off effective Western actions.

Putin has used a troll army throughout his presidency that went largely unnoticed prior to the Crimean invasion. The Kremlin indeed requires an “army” to construct a new universe parallel to the “real universe” in which we live. Google GOOGL +1.01% counts 1.5 million media entries under “Putin attacks Ukraine.” The trolls must convince their audience that the Google entry should read instead “Ukraine attacks Russia.” Quite a job!

According to a Buzzfeed account, each troll is expected to post 50 news articles daily and maintain six Facebook and ten Twitter accounts, with 50 tweets per day. At these rates, a small army of one thousand trolls will post 100,000 news articles and tweets per day. The Kremlin does not spare the cash. In a time of austerity, the budget for “participation in the international information space” is scheduled to rise to some $250 million in the next couple of years.