Russian propagandists earn billions of rubles annually: Verstka special project on elite “state-funded employees”

Russian propagandists earn billions of rubles annually: Verstka special project on elite “state-funded employees”

In the fifth year of the war, most of Russian society is tired of the “SMO”: the authorities’ ratings are falling, and trust in television is declining as well. But propagandists keep promoting the president and his war. And it is ordinary Russians themselves who pay them for it.

What we found out:

🟪Kirill Kovalchuk is the highest-paid and at the same time the least public participant in the ranking. The president of National Media Group, son of Kurchatov Institute head Mikhail Kovalchuk and nephew of Putin associate Yury Kovalchuk, earned 628 million rubles in a year, most of it in annual bonuses.

🟪Nikita Mikhalkov is the TV host with the biggest income: about 270 million rubles a year. Separately from his salaries, his bank accounts hold more than 2.5 billion rubles in deposits, bringing in about 515 million rubles in interest annually

🟪Boris Rozhin, who for a long time talked on federal TV about the RF Armed Forces’ offensive in the area of Mala Tokmachka, turned out to be the highest-paid among pro-war bloggers and military correspondents. Even without trips to the front line, he manages to earn more than 28 million rubles a year from Channel One and RT.

🟪Money in the propaganda machine is distributed according to proximity to power. War correspondents and Z-bloggers, people key to military propaganda, received only 6% of the total sum of 3 billion rubles a year. TV hosts got about a quarter. The main share went to media managers.

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Verstka

“State-Funded Employees.” Who earns what from propaganda of the war in Russia

Those stirring up the war receive tens of millions of rubles a month