As Russia ramps up its crackdown on dissenting voices, billionaire oligarch and longtime Putin crony Yuri Kovalchuk is on the frontlines of the disinformation war, managing the party line.
Marina Ovsyannikova interrupted Monday’s evening news on Russian TV’s Channel One when she appeared behind the on-air anchor holding a sign that read “NO WAR,” and “Don’t believe the propaganda. They lie to you here.” Authorities whisked away the news producer and detained her for over 12 hours. She was hit with a fine and, according to Russian state media, is now under investigation for spreading false information. “I wanted to show the world that … the majority of Russians are against the war” in Ukraine, Ovsyannikova told CNN. If convicted under Russia’s new law that prohibits expression deviating from government-approved “truth,” she faces up to 15 years in prison.
Russian President Vladimir Putin looms like a dark shadow over the broader Soviet-like crackdown on accurate information that, for example, prohibits the word “war” from being used by Russian media. (It’s called a “special military operation” whose goal is to rid Ukraine of Nazis.) Putin’s general in the disinformation war is Yuri Kovalchuk, the 70-year-old oligarch described by the U.S. government as Putin’s “close advisor” and “personal banker” in 2014 U.S. sanctions 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.
Kovalchuk and Putin are tight. They previously owned homes in the same exclusive Ozero dacha cooperative and Kovalchuk hosted the wedding of Putin’s daughter in 2013, according to the Panama Papers. In the last two years, Kovalchuk has “established himself as the de facto second man in Russia, the most influential among the president’s entourage,” according to Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, author of a book on Putin’s inner circle.
“When people say Russian state television, they really mean Kovalchuk television,” says Anders Åslund, an expert on Russia’s oligarchy. “Putin doesn’t trust the state sufficiently. He wants his closest man to control television.”
Kovalchuk, who Forbes estimates is worth $1.3 billion, created National Media Group in 2008 in partnership with another oligarch, Alexei Mordashov. Alina Kabaeva, widely considered Putin’s girlfriend, is the company’s chair. In addition to Channel One, National Media Group controls popular Russian television channels 5TV, REN-TV (formerly an opposition network to Putin) and entertainment channel CTC, as well as stakes in newspapers, digital media and content studios.
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.
The National Media Group and Kovalchuk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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. Ukraine and the Biden administration have denied those charges.
Kovalchuk is “known for his anti-liberal and anti-Western views” and his “conspiracy” thinking, says Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center and founder of newsite R.Politik. “People like Kovalchuk understand Putin’s priorities and goals,” she said. “They can feel it, and try to adapt media policy to such needs.”
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, according to independent Russian news site The Bell. Today, VK is being used by the Kremlin to recruit mercenaries for Russia’s war on Ukraine, the BBC reported.
“VK is playing an enormously influential role in keeping the population under control, spreading the narratives that are favorable to the Kremlin and punishing those who use the social network for spreading alternative views,” says Yablokov, the journalism professor. “VK is now as open as it could be to Russian domestic intelligence services.”
Kovalchuk and Putin became close in St. Petersburg during the 1990s, when Kovalchuk’s Rossiya Bank supported Putin’s political rise. Then, as now, Kovalchuk operated behind the scenes. David Lingelbach, a professor at the University of Baltimore, worked in Russia during the 1990s in banking and venture capital. On several occasions, Lingelbach met with Putin in his capacity as first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg to facilitate investments from foreign investors. “I met most of the other people that Putin brought into his inner circle — Igor Sechin, Dimitri Medvedev, Alexey Miller — but I never once saw or had any awareness of Kovalchuk,” Lingelbach says. “In hindsight, Putin was leading a second sort of private economic life, which he was developing with Kovalchuk.”
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. (Gusinsky, who denied all charges, has since disappeared from public view; the European Court of Human Rights declared in 2004 that accusations against Gusinsky were politically motivated.) 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.
These transactions were part of a larger transfer of wealth taking place during the 2000s, from oligarchs and the Russian state into the pockets of Putin and his cronies. Over $60 billion worth of state-owned assets were funneled through Gazprom to Kovalchuk’s Rossiya Bank and entities owned by other Putin allies, the Rotenberg brothers and Gennady Timchenko, between 2004 and the end of 2007, according to a 2008 investigation by Russian opposition figures Vladimir Milov and Boris Nemtsov. (Nemtsov was shot to death on a Moscow bridge in 2015.)
“In Putin’s initial term, the discussion was that all non-core assets of monopolies including Gazprom should go to open markets to create a competitive environment,” Vladimir Milov, who has since left Russia, told Forbes. “However, Putin completely turned that path around and transferred these assets to his cronies. Gazprom received nothing, the taxpayers received nothing, and instead of reform we shifted towards establishing a system of control under a handful of Putin’s cronies.”
As Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine continues, Kovalchuk’s importance is primed to grow. Oligarchs with assets in Europe and the U.S. are reeling under Western sanctions, and Putin is reportedly closing ranks, purging some of his top spies and military officials in response to Russia’s faltering war effort.
Kovalchuk is someone with whom Putin “can really share his life, his visions,” Stanovaya says. “And he trusts him.”