Exmo Is a Tempting Business; Naturally, Many People Would Like to Take It Away from Its Owner.” Freedom Letters Publisher Georgy Urushadze on TV Rain

“Exmo is a tempting business; naturally, many people would like to take it away from its owner.” Freedom Letters publisher Georgy Urushadze on TV Rain

The criminal case over “LGBT propaganda” in books by the publishing houses Popcorn Books and Individuum, opened in 2025, was opened on nonexistent grounds, Freedom Letters publisher Georgy Urushadze said on TV Rain.

“In Russia, neither Exmo nor any other publishing house has published a single book with ‘LGBT propaganda for children.’ So the pretext is bogus. And I hope the case ends in a fizzle,” the expert said.

According to one author who is published by Exmo, inside the publishing house there is a theory that what is happening is an attempt to seize the business, with the story about “LGBT propaganda” merely serving as cover. Urushadze says he is inclined to agree with that theory:

Indeed, it is a tempting, good business: a publishing house, a federal bookstore chain. Naturally, many people would like to take it away from its owner, Mr. [Oleg] Novikov. It would be a shame if that happened. And if it does happen, many authors will probably leave such a publishing house.

🔵Vidim Books co-founder Alexander Gavrilov earlier, in a conversation with TV Rain, expressed the opinion that the searches and detentions at Exmo are not a redistribution of the book market, but a “redistribution of the market of influence over minds,” since the Russian authorities “fiercely hate any forms of unity and association, any forms of horizontal unity.”

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