July 4

Dear friends,

This is the third edition of the RIMA (Russian Independent Media Archive) newsletter. Please forward this letter and share information about our project with those who might be interested. If you received this email as a forward and are not subscribed to our mailing list, you can subscribe here.

In our newsletters, we provide updates on the project's news. Over the past month, we have added the archives of RosKomSvoboda and the information and analytical center "Sova" to our collection, bringing the total number of publications in our archive to 19. We have also created a page for researchers. If you work with data, you can request a dataset from us. We will provide more details about these updates, but first, let's discuss the major news: the first armed rebellion against Putin.

What RIMA knows about Yevgeny Prigozhin

On June 23, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of Wagner PMC, initiated a military mutiny against Putin. Prigozhin and the PMC peacefully took control of Rostov-on-Don, a major city with a population of over 1 million, and advanced towards Moscow. The Wagnerites managed to shoot down several military planes and stopped 200 km away from Moscow. However, on June 24, Prigogine voluntarily withdrew. Surprisingly, it was not Putin but Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko who convinced Prigozhin to end the rebellion. The whereabouts of Putin during the rebellion remain unknown.

Experts and journalists are still trying to understand the motives behind this event and what will happen to Prigozhin and his PMC. While we at RIMA do not have all the answers, we do have information on what led to the rebellion and how Putin's chef became the owner of a personal army consisting of tens of thousands of individuals.

Here is a compilation of what Russian independent media outlets have reported about Prigozhin over the past 14 years:

• The first mention of Yevgeny Prigozhin in our archive dates back to October 2009, with an article on Grani.ru about the entrepreneur opening his private restaurant in the White House in Moscow and providing free meals to officials during the initial days to gain their attention.
• "The Project" conducted a comprehensive investigation covering four parts, including Prigozhin’s role in the Russian military campaign in Africa, his restaurant business with Kremlin, Russia's interference in elections across twenty countries, and his involvement in the civil war in Libya.
• "The Bell" published an investigation detailing the history of the creation of Wagner PMC.
• “Meduza” published articles about Prigozhin and Wagner PMC's involvement at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, as well as a court decision from 1981 regarding Prigozhin's complaint against a 13-year prison sentence he received for theft and robbery.
• "The Novaya gazeta" conducted investigations on various topics, including Prigozhin's surveillance of Barack Obama during his 2013 visit to Moscow, his control over the school food market in Moscow, and his methods of targeting his enemies.

It's important to note that Prigozhin has been actively suppressing independent journalism in Russia for many years, through lawsuits against independent journalists, the creation of troll factories and dissemination of fake news, and alleged involvement in attacks and murders of journalists.

Reports from the Dossier Center have shed light on Prigogine and his structures' alleged role in the murder of independent journalists Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev, and Kirill Radchenko in the Central African Republic, as well as how Prigozhin's media empire operates.

It appears that Prigozhin's media empire is facing destruction. We will continue to monitor these developments and provide updates in our upcoming newsletters.

We have uploaded RosKomSvoboda's archive