Filenews 23 March 2022
Marina Ovsianikova interrupted the evening news broadcast on Russian Channel One last week as she appeared behind a channel presenter holding placards that read "No to war" and "Don't believe propaganda. They're lying to you here."
Authorities removed the news producer and detained her for more than 12 hours. She was fined and, according to Russian state media, a case of spreading fake news is being investigated against her. "I wanted to show the world that the majority of Russians are against the war in Ukraine," Obsianikova told CNN. The implementation of the new Russian law against the "divergent governmental truth" would bring Ovshianikova to face a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
Vladimir Putin's shadow is 'hovering' over the Soviet-style distortion of the truth, since - for example - the use of the word 'war' by the Russian media is prohibited and the term 'special military operation' is used, the aim of which is 'the de-Naziisation of Ukraine', as Moscow claims. Putin's "commander-in-chief" in the war of disinformation is Yuri Kowalchuk, the 70-year-old oligarch, "close adviser" and "personal banker" of Putin, as the US says in the reasoning accompanying the sanctions imposed on him in 2014. Putin and Kowalchuk have been "almost inseparable" for the past two years, according to a Kremlin observer. Kovalchuk, through the National Media Group, is in control of the news that Russians see and hear. It has shares in Channel One and Russia's television networks with the widest influence on public opinion. Last December, his company acquired a stake in VK - the largest social media company in Russia.
Kovalchuk and Putin are close friends. They each own their own dacha in the Isthmus of Karelia, as part of the Ozero cooperative company, and - according to the Panama Papers - the Russian oligarch hosted the wedding of Putin's daughter in 2013. For the past two years, Kowalchuk "has been the de facto No. 2 strongman in Russia and the one with the greatest influence in the president's 'court'," says Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar.
"When people say Russian state television, they actually mean 'Kovalchuk TV'," says Anders Åslund, an expert on Russian oligarchs. "Putin does not trust the state enough. He wants his closest man to control the television media."
Kovalchuk, who in Forbes' estimate is worth $1.3 billion. dollars, created the Group National Media Group in 2008 in collaboration with another oligarch, Alexei Mordasov. Alina Kabaeva - Vladimir Putin's rumored mistress - is president of the company. In addition to Channel One, the National Media Group controls the popular Russian tv channels 5TV, REN-TV (a former anti-Putin opposition network) as well as the entertainment channel CTC. In addition, it holds shares in newspapers, digital media and studios.
The National Media Group is "one of the two leading players in the Russian media market. The other is the state-owned VGTRK," says Ilya Jablokov, a professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield in England.
The National Media Group and Kowalchuk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Russian television networks have been reproducing issues raised by Putin himself in his speeches or speeches. In recent days, analysts and TV presenters have promoted conspiracy theories to develop biological weapons from Ukraine with American support. Kiev and the Biden administration have denied these accusations.
Kowalchuk is "famous for his anti-liberal and anti-Western views" and his "conspiracy theories", says Tatiana Stanovaya, a collaborator-researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center and founder of the website R. Politik. "People like Kowalchuk understand Putin's priorities and goals," she stressed. "Then they try to adapt the tactics of SMEs to these needs."
In December 2021, kovalchuk's National Media Group acquired - from oligarch Aliser Usmanov - the majority stake in the Russian social media giant, VK. After the change of ownership, VK removed much of the company's management and upgraded Kowalchuk's relatives, according to independent Russian news website The Bell. Today, VK is being used by the Kremlin to recruit mercenaries who will fight in Ukraine, according to the BBC.
"VK plays an important role in manipulating public opinion, spreading the narratives the Kremlin wants and punishing those who use social networks to express alternative views," Jablokov stresses. "VK is now as 'open' as Russian domestic intelligence services."
Kowalchuk and Putin established close ties in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, when Kovalchuk's Rossiya Bank backed Putin's political advancement. Kovalchuk was acting then - as it is now - in the background. David Lingelbach, a professor at the University of Baltimore, worked in Russia in the 1990s in banking and investment. He met several times with Putin - when the current Russian president was the first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg - to facilitate the movements of foreign investors. "I met most of Putin's close circle - Igor Sechin, Dmitry Medvedev, Alexei Miller - but I never saw, nor did I have any contact with Kowalchuk," Lingelbach says. "In retrospect, Putin had something of a double economic life, which he co-shaped with Kovalchuk."
When Putin was elected president in 2000, Kovalchuk used The Rossiya Bank to build his empire in the media, finding support for Putin's operation to "exterminate" the opposition press. In 2000, the Russian president arrested the "media baron" Vladimir Gusinski on charges of fraud and forced him to sell his stakes to media, including REN-TV, with the state-owned Gazprom as its buyer. (Since then, Gusinski, who has denied all the charges, has disappeared from public life; the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2004 that the charges against Gusinski were politically motivated).) Subsequently, Putin "brokered" that Gazprom sold these shares, as well as the insurance company Sogaz and other financial assets, to Rossiya Bank at a bargain price.
These transactions were part of a wider shift of wealth - in the 2000s - from the oligarchs and the Russian state to the pockets of Putin and his friends. State assets worth more than €60 billion dollars were channelled through Gazprom to Kowalchuk's Rossiya Bank and to entities belonging to Putin's other allies - such as the Rottenberg brothers and Gennady Timchenko - in 2004-2007, according to an investigation carried out by Russian opposition figures Vladimir Milov and Boris Nemtsov in 2008. (Nemtsov was murdered in 2015 when he was shot by an unknown person on a Moscow bridge).)
"In Putin's first term, there were discussions that wanted the non-core assets of the monopolies, including Gazprom, to be channelled into the open market to enhance competition," Vladimir Milov, who has left Russia, told Forbes. "However, Putin thwarted this plan and transferred these assets to his close friends. Gazprom received nothing, the taxpayers received nothing, and so instead of entering an era of reforms, we moved on to establishing a control system run by a small group of Putin's friends."
As Russia's war against Ukraine rages, Kowalchuk's role is strengthened. The oligarchs with assets in Europe and the US are "faltering" under the weight of the sanctions imposed on them by the West, while Putin is reportedly purged top spies and army officers in response to the "swamping" of the Russian military operation.
"Kowalchuk is the man with whom Putin can share his life and visions," Stanovaya says. "And he trusts him."
Source: Forbes
