“He’s the money guy, and he’s the media guy”: Yuri Kovalchuk’s sprawling media empire pumps out propaganda, helps crush dissent and works to distract an unsettled public as Russia’s troubles mount in Ukraine.
One of the most influential voices bolstering Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine belongs to a 71-year-old billionaire who argued that a war could prove Russia’s strength.shares Mr. Putin’s vision of Russia
TV news channels in Mr. Kovalchuk’s National Media Group presented a calm and steady picture of motivated and highly trained reservists being called to the front lines, and they aired accusations by Russian officials that Ukraine is planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” on its own territory. Part of the logic of buying VK was to keep tabs on anti-Kremlin users, according to a person in the tech industry with ties to the Kremlin. As Russian security officials use the platform to identify and track violators of laws that ban discrediting or spreading misinformation about the Russian military, VK informally shares data about users with authorities, according to people familiar with the platform’s practices.
A physicist by training, Mr. Kovalchuk is motivated more by patriotic ideology than by the trappings of wealth, say people who know him. He doesn’t hold a formal position in the Russian government. Yet he has deep influence over Kremlin policy and personnel, and helps supply dachas and yachts for Mr. Putin’s use, and lucrative jobs and stockholdings to the president’s family and friends, according to people familiar with the deals, financial documents and anticorruption groups.who the U.S.
Mr. Kovalchuk is also a major shareholder, along with his wife and some business partners, of Sogaz, an insurance company that provides health and life insurance for Russian armed forces under contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry and National Guard, according to public documents. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, Mr. Kovalchuk quarantined and underwent regular testing to meet with Mr. Putin, who was isolating at his dachas and taking few in-person meetings, according to several people with knowledge of the relationship.
Messrs. Putin and Kovalchuk, both from St. Petersburg, go way back. In 1991, Mr. Kovalchuk and some partners acquired Bank Rossiya after its owner, the St. Petersburg Communist Party, was disbanded. Mr. Putin, then one of the city’s deputy mayors, steered business to the bank, according to the 2014 book “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?” by Karen Dawisha.Alexander Demianchuk/Zuma Press
Wartime instructions to Russian media have included highlighting Russian military successes despite the battlefield losses, and describing mobilization as a patriotic duty, according to memos from the Kremlin to the editors described by Meduza, an independent news site. “Russia got the message that online organization of protests can actually take down a government, one that looks like their own,” said Sarah Ann Oates, a professor at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism who studies Russian media and propaganda.
By 2018, Mr. Usmanov was no longer involved in VK’s management, the spokesman said, and soon shifted his focus to his other businesses, including mining, metallurgy and telecommunications. Mr. Kovalchuk initially was going to make the purchase through a partly state-owned company, Rostelecom, in which he holds shares, according to the person in the tech industry with ties to the Kremlin.
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