Secretive pro-Putin 'troll factory' faces Russian court

The mysterious Russian agency that hires people to write pro-Kremlin propaganda on the web stepped into the public spotlight for the first time Tuesday as a former employee took it to court.

The Agency for Internet Studies, which runs what has been called a "troll factory" from a nondescript Saint Petersburg address, is being sued by employee Lyudmila Savchuk for alleged underpayment and various labour violations.

The agency however is now seeking to avoid public scrutiny by offering to compensate Savchuk, who told AFP in an interview earlier this year that she was one of many paid to write comments online supporting President Vladimir Putin's policies.

Lawyer Yekaterina Nazarova, representing the agency, told the Petrogradsky district court judge that her client was "ready to strike a settlement" with Savchuk, who had asked for a symbolic sum of 10,000 rubles ($185).

Nazarova offered to wire the sum to Savchuk's account, before quickly leaving the courthouse at the end of the hearing without commenting to the press.

Savchuk said she was happy with the outcome, but indicated that her crusade against the agency was not yet finished.

- 'Out of the shadows' -

"I am very pleased, they pretended they don't exist at all and now they have come out of the shadows for the first time, we saw their representative," she told AFP.

"But I will feel that I won only after the troll factory closes completely."

Savchuk says she worked at the agency for two months after responding to a generic online advert, but quit in March 2015 and now vows to expose the organisation's schemes.

The agency, located in the north of Russia's second-largest city, is blamed by observers for doing the Kremlin's dirty work on the Internet, polluting news websites with inflammatory comments and even causing social networks to block anti-Putin bloggers.

The phenomenon has become particularly intense during the conflict in Ukraine, with some reports claiming the agency has expanded into foreign languages, pictures and videos, and is even running its own news sites.

Savchuk's lawyer Ivan Pavlov said the result of Tuesday's hearing -- the second this month after the agency skipped the first -- was "unexpected" and he suspected the defendant of trying to escape the public eye.

"I suppose the defendant considers it a lesser evil to recognise the lawsuit and pay compensation," he said.

Pavlov added that the next step would be a meeting with Savchuk at the agency's headquarters in July, which he called "another chance to make their activities transparent".