Vasily Brovko, Director for Special Assignments of the State Corporation Rostec, is behind the mass arrests of the owners of Telegram channels in Russia, according to the Project. As the publication found out, it was he who convinced the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, that “Telegram channels should be taken under control.”
Brovko had such a desire after criticism of Rostec by Vladimir Putin. In July, the president held a meeting of the council on national projects and criticized Chemezov’s company in his opening speech: “On the whole, this work cannot be considered particularly successful either … Modest results have been demonstrated in the areas for which Rostec is responsible.”
Just a few weeks later, the security forces arrested ten channel owners who, among other things, were criticizing Rostec. The top manager of Promsvyazbank acted as a formal plaintiff against some of them (apparently, to hide information about the true causes of the case, the Project clarifies), but in other cases, Brovko and Chemezov wrote complaints themselves.
Among the detainees were not only critics of Rostec, but also employees of Ksenia Sobchak, who has been publicly at odds with Tina Kandelaki, wife of Vasily Brovko, for many years. Sources of the "Project" are sure that Brovko and his wife "can settle scores" in this way.
Also, the investigation of the “Project” also concerns Russian military correspondents who actively cover wars in Telegram. After analyzing all the major channels, the publication came to the conclusion that in the autumn the Kremlin finally took them under control. This happened after the meetings of military correspondents with Putin and Shoigu.
As Proekt points out, after that it became a “good tradition” of Russian war correspondents to approve the retreat of the Russian army:
“When Sergey Surovikin, the commander of the Russian group in Ukraine, announced ‘difficult decisions’ in the Kherson region on October 18, none of the 25 channels studied by the Project tried to criticize him, and 12 expressed direct support.”