Three top managers quit two popular tabloid media outlets with famously close ties to the Russian police

On Monday, September 18, two news projects launched by Aram Gabrelyanov lost top managers: chief editor Alexey Potapov and CEO Anatoly Suleimanov quit the tabloid Life.ru, and Nikita Mogutin left the popular Telegram channel Mash. Suleimanov spent less than a month as CEO, taking the job in August, when Gabrelyanov himself stepped down. Gabrelyanov maintains his 25-percent stake in National Media Group, which reportedly owns Life.ru, and Mogutin says he recently sold off his 51 percent in Mash.

In an interview with The Bell, Suleimanov said he left the news outlet to develop a project that Life.ru recently abandoned: an open platform with user-generated content that appeals to a broader audience than Life.ru’s typical “oorah-patriots.” Specifically, Suleimanov said this necessitates making the platform available to “your various Navalnys” and “anti-Navalnys,” referring to the anti-corruption politician who built his public visibility using blogs.

Throughout the interview, Suleimanov compared his open-platform project to Yandex Zen (an automated personal recommendations service), while insisting that he’s working on something different. Refusing to name his investors, Suleimanov revealed that they aren’t previously involved in the media and are wealthy enough to appear on Forbes’ list of Russia’s richest people. Currently, the project’s team has just four staff members, including Suleimanov.

Suleimanov said the new project won’t seek a mass-media license from the Russian authorities, arguing that “a license restricts media outlets more than it benefits them.” The new platform will host a variety of content, including “investigations, reports, and the day’s trends presented in a fun way.”

Suleimanov also partially confirmed a claim by The Bell’s unnamed source that he quit Life.ru because the company’s principal shareholder — Yuri Kovalchuk — started interfering in the newsroom and “fulfilling the Kremlin’s interests” after Gabrelyanov left. It’s unclear what this means, given that Life.ru has always been a regime-loyal media outlet.