Moscow Times:Lenta.ru journalists posted articles on the website with anti-war appeals and criticism of Putin

There have been more and more reports from inside Russia of various forms of dissent including posts criticizing the war in Ukraine and support for Ukraine. This is the latest occurrence that happened in the Russian media outlet Lenta. ru with journalists posting criticism of Putin and making anti-war appeals. I am reposting this article from the Moscow Times Russian edition.

05/09/2022 6 часов назад

Employees of Lenta.ru published on the main page of the site materials criticizing the actions of Vladimir Putin and calling for an end to the war in Ukraine. The materials were later removed, but some of them can be found in the web archive. 

From 7:00 to 9:00 Moscow time, materials with the headings  “Russian authorities forbade journalists to talk about the negative”, “Record spending on the army did not help Russia defeat Ukraine”, and “Vladimir Putin lied about Russia’s plans in Ukraine” appeared on the publication’s website ”(Usually in the materials of Lenta.ru they write “in Ukraine”), “Putin turned the state into the main robber of Russians”, “The Russian army turned out to be an army of thieves and marauders” and others.

“Disclaimer: this material has not been agreed with the leadership, and for its publication the Presidential Administration will distribute stars to the publication, in other words: urgently take a screen before it is deleted,” is indicated at the beginning of each material.

In the postscript to the article under the heading " War makes it easier to cover up failures in the economy ", the head of the departments "Economics" and "Habitat" Egor Polyakov and the editor of these departments Alexandra Miroshnikova took responsibility for publishing the materials. The article ends with words of gratitude to the people who publicly spoke out against the conflict in Ukraine, and words about finding work, lawyers, and political asylum.

Sources from Meduza and  Mediazona (both publications are recognized as “foreign agents”) confirmed that the employees of Lenta.ru themselves did this: they replaced the text in other already published news. Polyakov confirmed to The Insider (recognized as a "foreign agent") his involvement in the publications.

The management of Lenta.ru did not immediately respond to reports of a hack. One of the editorial staff told The Insider about the panic in work chats. Later, the editor-in-chief of the publication, Vladimir Todorov, posted a message for employees:

“Friends, hello everyone. As you have probably seen, an unpleasant incident happened on our website. While we finally understand its causes, we are forced to temporarily close the ability to write to the chat.

Lenta.ru is owned by Rambler Media Group, owned by Sber since 2020. In 2014, editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko was fired from Lenta.ru without an official announcement of the reasons. As a sign of solidarity, along with the editor-in-chief, other employees also quit, some of whom, including Timchenko herself, founded the Meduza publication.