MOSCOW: He’s been indicted in the US for meddling in the 2016 presidential election with an army of trolls and his private military company has trodden battlefields in Ukraine and Syria. Still, the Russian multimillionaire dubbed “Putin’s chef” runs yet another asset that is valuable to the Kremlin: a sprawling Russian media empire.
St. Petersburg restaurateur Yevgeny Prigozhin is believed to control more than a dozen news portals in Russia that attract tens of millions of visitors and serve as an important state propaganda weapon as President Vladimir Putin runs for re-election in the March 18 vote.
While the media outlets themselves have been tight-lipped about their owners, an investigation by the respected RBC business magazine and reports by other Russian media have revealed their connections to other Prigozhin assets, including the “troll farm,” 12 of whose operatives were indicted in the US along with Prigozhin.
The troll factory, the innocuously named Internet Research Agency, initially operated under the same roof with the Federal News Agency and other media outlets that allegedly belong to Prigozhin, but later they split and moved to different buildings on the northern edge of St. Petersburg. RBC reported that Mikhail Burchik, one of the indicted troll farm operatives, also played a key role in Prigozhin’s media holdings.
Just three years after their creation in 2014, the Federal News Agency and 15 other news portals allegedly under Prigozhin’s control had more than 30 million monthly visitors, surpassing Russia’s top state news agencies. They have covered a wide range of subjects, from foreign policy to economy to celebrities. And while their profiles differed, the editorial course was identical — adulation of Putin and stinging criticism of the West.
“They want to dominate the information space and shape the news agenda,” said Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. He noted that along with the troll farm and private military contractors, the media business is part of Prigozhin’s efforts to curry favor with Putin.
Oreshkin pointed at Prigozhin’s estimated $1.2-billion contract with the Defense Ministry to provide food and services for the military as an example of reward the businessman gets for the favors he offers the Kremlin.
“Close links with the top echelons of power open access to state contracts,” he said. “Those who have such ties are never short of money.”
The Federal News Agency, the largest of 16 media outlets allegedly controlled by Prigozhin, has carried a stream of fawning accounts of Putin’s activities along with articles containing scathing criticism of the US and its allies. As the presidential election approaches, it has regularly published glances and quote boxes about how life has improved under Putin.
It has gained visibility thanks to exclusive reports from the front lines in eastern Ukraine and Syria, where the Wagner group of military contractors linked to Prigozhin operated. Its reporters were the first to report from the ancient town of Palmyra in eastern Syria after Syrian troops took it from the Daesh group.
A long commentary this week disparaged the US military, alleging that it has been plagued by drug addiction, crime and low morale. Other commentaries rejected accounts of massive personnel losses suffered by the Wagner group in Syria this month as Western-fed propaganda. One report alleged that the US was developing biological weapons at secret laboratories in Russia’s ex-Soviet neighbors, Ukraine and Georgia.
Economics Today, a business news portal also considered part of Prigozhin’s empire, ran an article emphasizing the importance of turning out to vote in the presidential election in sync with the Kremlin’s push for maximizing attendance at the polls to make Putin’s victory more impressive.
It also juxtaposed reports about positive trends in the Russian economy with accounts of economic woes faced by Ukraine, and predicted the imminent collapse of Western sanctions against Russia.
Prigozhin’s media outlets employ several hundred journalists, offering higher salaries compared with other St. Petersburg-based media outlets, according to RBC. It estimated the annual cost of running Prigozhin’s media empire at $3.2-4.7 million.
Prigozhin hasn’t responded to requests for an interview.
While investing in his media assets, Prigozhin has taken methodical steps to muzzle independent media outlets that ran investigative reports about his businesses.
Diana Kachalova, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta in St. Petersburg, said the Kremlin-critical newspaper’s exposure of Prigozhin’s business drew his revenge.
“After that, he began to hate all the newspapers and supposedly he began to organize trouble for the media, including cyberattacks,” she said.
On one widely reported occasion, a woman linked to a Prigozhin business applied for a job at Novaya Gazeta in an apparent attempt to gather information about its operations. The woman, whom the newspaper dubbed “Masha Hari” in a mocking reference to the World War I spy Mata Hari, was later spotted at the troll factory, Kachalova said.
At some point Prigozhin tried unsuccessfully to win a court order that would require Internet search engines to remove several dozen critical reports about his activities.
They included one that pointed out that even as Prigozhin’s catering company served the participants in the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg in 2013, other structures allegedly linked to him engaged in sloppy propaganda stunts intended to advance Kremlin goals.
A newspaper linked to Prigozhin posted a report about gay activists coming to greet former President Barack Obama during his visit to the G-20, a fake that came in counterattack to the US criticism of a Russian law blasting gay “propaganda.” A lookalike of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny also was filmed outside a hotel where Obama was staying to back the Kremlin’s description of Navalny as a man serving the US interests.
The actions appeared to reflect an eccentric side of Prigozhin, which broke through in a rare 2011 interview with a St. Petersburg newspaper in which he talked about a children’s tale he wrote that featured midgets protecting a king against ill-wishers.
Prigozhin, who served nine years in prison on robbery and other charges during Soviet times and started his business from a hot-dog stand, also went on to boast of being on a first-name basis with a few European royals. He added that Putin appreciated both his adroitness in business and his unassuming demeanor.
“Vladimir Putin saw how I developed my business starting from a food stand. And he also saw that I never shrink from personally serving a plate to dignitaries who are my guests,” he said.
Charged ‘Putin’s chef’ runs news sites along with troll army
Charged ‘Putin’s chef’ runs news sites along with troll army
Iran’s Internet blackout leaves public in dark, creates uneven picture of war with Israel
- Civilians are left unaware of when and where Israel will strike next, despite Israeli forces issuing warnings
- Activists see it as a form of psychological warfare
DUBAI: As the war between Israel and Iran hits the one-week mark, Iranians have spent nearly half of the conflict in a near-communication blackout, unable to connect not only with the outside world but also with their neighbors and loved ones across the country.
Civilians are left unaware of when and where Israel will strike next, despite Israeli forces issuing warnings through their Persian-language online channels. When the missiles land, disconnected phone and web services mean not knowing for hours or days if their family or friends are among the victims. That’s left many scrambling on various social media apps to see what’s happening — again, only a glimpse of life able to reach the Internet in a nation of over 80 million people.
Activists see it as a form of psychological warfare for a nation all-too familiar with state information controls and targeted Internet shutdowns during protests and unrest.
“The Iranian regime controls the information sphere really, really tightly,” Marwa Fatafta, the Berlin-based policy and advocacy director for digital rights group Access Now, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We know why the Iranian regime shuts down. It wants to control information. So their goal is quite clear.”
War with Israel tightens information space
But this time, it’s happening during a deadly conflict that erupted on June 13 with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based group called Human Rights Activists.
Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli military estimates. Most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defenses, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds others wounded. Guidance from Israeli authorities, as well as round-the-clock news broadcasts, flows freely and consistently to Israeli citizens, creating in the last seven days an uneven picture of the death and destruction brought by the war.
The Iranian government contended Friday that it was Israel who was “waging a war on truth and human conscience.” In a post on X, a social media platform blocked for many of its citizens, Iran’s Foreign Ministry asserted Israel banned foreign media from covering missile strikes.
The statement added that Iran would organize “global press tours to expose Israel’s war crimes” in the country. Iran is one of the world’s top jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and in the best of times, reporters face strict restrictions.
Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org reported on Friday that Iran had been disconnected from the global Internet for 36 hours, with its live metrics showing that national connectivity remained at only a few percentage points of normal levels. The group said a handful of users have been able to maintain connectivity through virtual private networks.
Few avenues exist to get information
Those lucky few have become lifelines for Iranians left in the dark. In recent days, those who have gained access to mobile Internet for a limited time describe using that fleeting opportunity to make calls on behalf of others, checking in on elderly parents and grandparents, and locating those who have fled Tehran.
The only access to information Iranians do have is limited to websites in the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Iran’s state-run television and radio stations offer irregular updates on what’s happening inside the country, instead focusing their time on the damage wrought by their strikes on Israel.
The lack of information going in or out of Iran is stunning, considering that the advancement of technology in recent decades has only brought far-flung conflicts in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and elsewhere directly to a person’s phone anywhere in the world.
That direct line has been seen by experts as a powerful tool to shift public opinion about any ongoing conflict and potentially force the international community to take a side. It has also turned into real action from world leaders under public and online pressure to act or use their power to bring an end to the fighting.
But Mehdi Yahyanejad, a key figure in promoting Internet freedom in Iran, said that the Islamic Republic is seeking to “purport an image” of strength, one that depicts only the narrative that Israel is being destroyed by sophisticated Iranian weapons that include ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.
“I think most likely they’re just afraid of the Internet getting used to cause mass unrest in the next phase of whatever is happening,” Yahayanejad said. “I mean, some of it could be, of course, planned by the Israelis through their agents on the ground, and some of this could be just a spontaneous unrest by the population once they figure out that the Iranian government is badly weakened.
BBC threatens legal action against AI startup Perplexity over content scraping
- Perplexity has faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, for plagiarizing their content
LONDON: The BBC has threatened legal action against Perplexity, accusing the AI startup of training its “default AI model” using BBC content, the Financial Times reported on Friday, making the British broadcaster the latest news organisation to accuse the AI firm of content scraping.
The BBC may seek an injunction unless Perplexity stops scraping its content, deletes existing copies used to train its AI systems, and submits “a proposal for financial compensation” for the alleged misuse of its intellectual property, FT said, citing a letter sent to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.
The broadcaster confirmed the FT report on Friday.
Perplexity has faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, for plagiarizing their content but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address publisher concerns.
Last October, the New York Times sent it a “cease and desist” notice, demanding the firm stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have raised alarms about chatbots that comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for users.
The BBC said that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity and that links to the BBC website have appeared in search results, according to the FT report.
Perplexity called the BBC’s claims “manipulative and opportunistic” in a statement to Reuters, adding that the broadcaster had “a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law.”
Perplexity provides information by searching the internet, similar to ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, and is backed by Amazon.com (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos, AI giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), and Japan’s SoftBank Group (9984.T).
The startup is in advanced talks to raise $500 million in a funding round that would value it at $14 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Streaming platform Deezer starts flagging AI-generated music
- French streaming service Deezer is now alerting users when they come across music identified as completely generated by artificial intelligence, the company told AFP on Friday
PARIS: French streaming service Deezer is now alerting users when they come across music identified as completely generated by artificial intelligence, the company told AFP on Friday in what it called a global first.
The announcement by chief executive Alexis Lanternier follows repeated statements from the platform that a torrent of AI-generated tracks is being uploaded daily — a challenge Deezer shares with other streaming services including Swedish heavyweight Spotify.
Deezer said in January that it was receiving uploads of 10,000 AI tracks a day, doubling to over 20,000 in an April statement — or around 18 percent of all music added to the platform.
The company “wants to make sure that royalties supposed to go to artists aren’t being taken away” by tracks generated from a brief text prompt typed into a music generator like Suno or Udio, Lanternier said.
AI tracks are not being removed from Deezer’s library, but instead are demonetised to avoid unfairly reducing human musicians’ royalties.
Albums containing tracks suspected of being created in this way are now flagged with a notice reading “content generated by AI,” a move Deezer says is a global first for a streaming service.
Lanternier said Deezer’s home-grown detection tool was able to spot markers of AI provenance with 98 percent accuracy.
“An audio signal is an extremely complex bundle of information. When AI algorithms generate a new song, there are little sounds that only they make which give them away... that we’re able to spot,” he said.
“It’s not audible to the human ear, but it’s visible in the audio signal.”
With 9.7 million subscribers worldwide, most of them in France, Deezer is a relative minnow compared to Spotify, which has 268 million.
The Swedish firm in January signed a deal supposed to better remunerate artists and other rights holders with the world’s biggest label, Universal Music Group.
But Spotify has not taken the same path as Deezer of demonetising AI content.
It has pointed to the lack of a clear definition for completely AI-generated audio, as well as any legal framework setting it apart from human-created works.
Israeli police prevent media from reporting at scene of Soroka hospital strike
- Officers block journalists from filming at medical center hit by Iranian missile on Thursday, and demand they hand over equipment
- The move is said to the result of directives issued by Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir
- Amid growing concerns about restrictions on reporting, advocates for freedom of the press accuse Israeli authorities of censorship
LONDON: Israeli police reportedly prevented journalists from filming at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, which suffered “extensive damage” from an Iranian missile strike on Thursday.
Officers were said to have cited security concerns as the reason, on the grounds that footage from the scene revealed “precise locations” and had been broadcast by Al Jazeera, a media outlet banned in Israel since May 2024 over its coverage of the war in Gaza.
The Times of Israel said police confronted one cameraman at the hospital site and demanded he hand over his equipment. The journalist reportedly refused and told officers: “They are seeing you on CNN, seeing you on BBC, seeing you all over the world, so calm down for a second.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the attack in which the hospital was damaged, saying it had targeted nearby Israeli military and intelligence sites. The Israeli military denied having any facilities in the area. Footage authenticated by BBC Verify suggested the medical complex was hit by a direct strike.
Israeli police confirmed on Thursday that they ordered a halt to foreign media coverage at Soroka and other affected locations for reasons of national security. They added that they were actively looking for media workers filming at the sites.
“Israel Police units were dispatched to halt the broadcasts, including those of news agencies through which Al Jazeera was airing illegal transmissions,” the force said.
During a visit to the hospital site on Thursday, Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said: “This morning in Tel Aviv, there was an incident where equipment was confiscated. There is a clear policy: Al Jazeera endangers state security.”
The crackdown on the media comes amid growing concerns among advocates for freedom of the press. Several journalists and other industry professionals have reported obstruction by authorities, including confiscation of equipment. Many accuse Israeli officials of censorship. It follows policy directives from far-right minister Ben-Gvir, in coordination with Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, to “maintain the safety and security of citizens.”
Sources close to Ben-Gvir said he has instructed Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and the police to step up action against any foreign media outlets or civilians suspected of celebrating the Iranian missile attacks.
“There will be zero tolerance for expressions of joy over attacks on Israel,” Ben-Gvir said this week.
Tensions in the region have risen sharply since coordinated strikes by Israeli authorities against Iranian military and nuclear sites began on June 13. Tehran has retaliated with missile strikes on Israeli targets, some of which have hit civilian buildings.
After a visit to the Soroka hospital site on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz escalated the rhetoric further, declaring that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist.”
Iranian authorities say at least 639 people have been killed and 1,329 wounded since the fighting began a week ago. The death toll in Israel stands at 24, according to officials in the country.
Trump administration tightens social media vetting for foreign students
- US will now impose much stricter social media vetting for visa applicants, requiring them to make social media profiles public to check for anti-American content
- Washington told US missions abroad they can resume visa processing for students, after appointments were suspended in May
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday ordered the resumption of student visa appointments but will significantly tighten its social media vetting in a bid to identify any applicants who may be hostile toward the United States, according to an internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters.
US consular officers are now required to conduct a “comprehensive and thorough vetting” of all student and exchange visitor applicants to identify those who “bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles,” said the cable, which was dated June 18 and sent to US missions on Wednesday.
On May 27, the Trump administration ordered its missions abroad to stop scheduling new appointments for student and exchange visitor visa applicants, saying the State Department was set to expand social media vetting of foreign students.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said updated guidance would be released once a review was completed.
The June 18 dated cable, which was sent by Rubio and sent to all US diplomatic missions, directed officers to look for “applicants who demonstrate a history of political activism, especially when it is associated with violence or with the views and activities described above, you must consider the likelihood they would continue such activity in the United States.”
The cable, which was first reported by Free Press, also authorized the consular officers to ask the applicants to make all of their social media accounts public.
“Remind the applicant that limited access to....online presence could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity,” the cable said.
The move follows the administration’s enhanced vetting measures last month for visa applicants looking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose, in what a separate State Department cable said would serve as a pilot program for wider expanded screening.
ONLINE PRESENCE
The new vetting process should include a review of the applicant’s entire online presence and not just social media activity, the cable said, urging the officers to use any “appropriate search engines or other online resources.”
During the vetting, the directive asks officers to look for any potentially derogatory information about the applicant.
“For example, during an online presence search, you might discover on social media that an applicant endorsed Hamas or its activities,” the cable says, adding that may be a reason for ineligibility.
Rubio, Trump’s top diplomat and national security adviser, has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities that he said went against US foreign policy priorities.
Those activities include support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.
A Tufts University student from Turkiye was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail.
Trump’s critics have said the administration’s actions are an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
FEWER APPOINTMENTS?
While the new directive allows posts to resume scheduling for student and exchange visa applicants, it is warning the officers that there may have to be fewer appointments due to the demands of more extensive vetting.
“Posts should consider overall scheduling volume and the resource demands of appropriate vetting; posts might need to schedule fewer FMJ cases than they did previously,” the cable said, referring to the relevant visa types.
The directive has also asked posts to prioritize among expedited visa appointments of foreign-born physicians participating in a medical program through exchange visas, as well as student applicants looking to study in a US university where international students constitute less than 15 percent of the total.
At Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest US university on which the administration has launched a multifront attack by freezing its billions of dollars of grants and other funding, foreign students last year made up about 27 percent of the total student population.
The cable is asking the overseas posts to implement these vetting procedures within five business days.
