Meet The Man Who Whispers In Putin’s Ear:
against him. The two men have been “almost inseparable” in the last couple of years, according to one Kremlin watcher. Kovalchuk, through his holding company National Media Group, has a grip on what news Russians see and hear. He owns stakes in Channel One and several of Russia’s most influential TV channels. In December, his company acquired a piece of VK, Russia’s largest social media company.
The National Media Group is “one of the two biggest players in the Russian media market” along with state-owned VGTRK, says Ilya Yablokov, a journalism professor at the University of Sheffield in England.Since the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, media coverage on Russian TV networks have echoed themes in Putin’s speeches. This week, pundits and anchors have pushed conspiracy theories about Ukraine developing biological weapons with U.S. support.
In December 2021, Kovalchuk’s National Media Group acquired a controlling stake in Russian social media giant VK from oligarch Alisher Usmanov. Following the ownership change, VK fired much of its existing management and promoted Kovalchuk relatives,.
Once Putin was elected president in 2000, Kovalchuk used Rossiya Bank to build his media empire, powered by Putin’s relentless drive to kill negative press. In 2000, Putin arrested media baron Vladimir Gusinsky on charges of fraud and forced him to sell his media properties, including his crown jewel REN-TV, to state-owned Gazprom. Putin then arranged for Gazprom to sell those media assets, as well as its insurance business Sogaz and other financial assets, to Rossiya Bank at a bargain price.
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