Employees of the “troll factory” and the media of Yevgeny Prigozhin told The Bell that they expect an imminent change of ownership. They consider Yury Kovalchuk's structures to be the most likely contender for these assets.
After the founder of PMC Wagner announced a mercenary campaign against Moscow, the security forces seized equipment from all his offices in St. Petersburg. Because of this, the work of the “troll factory” was (and remains) paralyzed for almost the entire week.
According to the employees of RIA FAN, at the time of the start of Prigozhin's rebellion, Ilya Gorbunov, a former employee of Komsomolskaya Pravda and RIA Novosti, was managing his media assets.
After the end of the rebellion, Gorbunov, according to The Bell, negotiated with potential new owners of the Patriot. However, the source of the publication doubts that the manager will be able to agree with someone, since he "supervised Beglov's Mochilovo, and then the Ministry of Defense."
RIA FAN employees themselves cannot contact Gorbunov. One of the interlocutors of the publication suggests that he left the country. Most of the employees, according to sources, have stopped work and are only interested in one thing – when they will receive payments for June.