Ran around the office shouting: “I love war”

Over the course of four years of war, Alexey Kostylev’s journey has been almost cinematic: from the head of a media outlet that was considered oppositional until 2022, to a media manager embedded in the state’s information machine; from a person who publicly denied any “purchase” of the publication, to a figure involved in a case of embezzlement of billions of budget funds; from the owner of a rapidly growing media outlet, to someone who lost control of it.

On February 27, 2026, Alexey Kostylev, the founder of Readovka, was arrested in the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow in a fraud case. Kostylev, who had previously referred to his media outlet as an “opinion publication,” turned it into one of the main war-mongering outlets.

Until recently, Alexey publicly discussed the “new world,” went to propaganda federal talk shows, and almost regularly appeared in the Kremlin for meetings of “war correspondents” with Putin. Now he is a defendant in a criminal case with serious illnesses after the accident, having lost not only his publication, but also his freedom.

How Readovka changed and grew on military propaganda

Until February 2022, Readovka occupied a weird but stable niche. It was an aggressive, sometimes scandalous, but, according to the founder and editor-in-chief of the publication, Alexey Kostylev, independent media outlet. The project grew out of a regional Smolensk VKontakte public page that Kostylev launched in 2011. Before the full-scale war, the publication was not directly associated with the authorities, but it was often referred to as a “right-wing” media outlet, largely due to its extensive coverage of migrant issues. In December 2021, Readovka was denied accreditation for Vladimir Putin’s press conference, and Kostylev publicly compared the situation to the refusal to Novaya Gazeta. In the fall of 2021, the editorial staff published articles about abuses in the “DPR.” In particular, they wrote about the kidnapping and murder of a local resident by the “DPR” Ministry of Internal Affairs in Donetsk, analyzed criminal cases involving Wagner PMC fighters, and criticized the Kadyrovites, calling them the “personal army of the sultan.”

“To absolutely any of the residents of Russia… tomorrow, a full-armed group of commandos from the Kadyrov Regiment or the SOBR “Terek” will arrive in the most distant city from Chechnya, break down the door, pull you out of the apartment and take away to the zindan,” — wrote on January 22, 2022 Readovka about the detention of the family of the former judge Saidi Yangulbaev by Chechen security forces.

All the more unexpected was the publication’s 180-degree turn. For example, on December 2, 2021, the publication published an investigation about the pro-government Telegram channel “Mrakoborets,” accusing it of ties with security forces and denouncing opposition activists. However, on March 4, 2022, it reposted another denunciation by “Mrakoborets” as “specifically prepared for Readovka.”

According to three former Readovka employees and one current employee, whom ASTRA spoke to, about a week before February 24, 2022, Kostylev began having long conversations with journalists about how “the world would never be the same again.” This was a strange development for a publication that had previously avoided ideological “lectures.”

On February 22, two days before the start of a full-scale invasion, Readovka’s first korrespondent, National Bolshevik Kirill Imashev, is sent to Donetsk. At the same time, the publication previously had no permanent correspondents outside of Moscow and Smolensk.

On February 24, everything changes.

According to former employees, Kostylev demanded that they “leave objectivity in the past” and take a hardline pro-war stance. “He would run around the office shouting, ‘I love war.’ He demanded that we write texts in an aggressive tone and threatened to fire anyone who expressed doubts.”

At one of the meetings in the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he announced that the publication’s previous principles were no longer valid. In an audio recording of this meeting obtained by ASTRA, he explicitly tells the staff about the transition to a “military mode” and the actual abandonment of the previous editorial policy.

“The war has been going on for five days… there will be no old world. Naturally, there will be no old publication, Kostylev said.

According to him, journalists should “put aside their doubts” and accept the new reality: “We just need to accept the inevitable… our position in this game is clear: we want to win.” For those who were not ready to work in this mode, he suggested taking a leave of absence or leaving the editorial office: “If you haven’t made an internal decision… good luck with your happy life.” At the same time, Kostylev promised financial incentives, such as bonuses and doubled salaries, to encourage his employees.

“For me, this is not a matter of money right now. For me, this is a serious ideological issue at this historical crossroads. We must mobilize, gather our strength, and put aside all doubts,” Kostylev said during the meeting.

In the first few days after this, three senior producers left Readovka, opposing the pro-war propaganda that Kostylev had been demanding from his employees since February 24. By mid-March, a writing producer, an SMM editor, and a video editor had also left, almost the entire staff of the editorial team that had been working there since the summer of 2021. According to those who worked with him, Alexey himself tried to keep the core of the editorial team and asked in a manipulative tone, “What will you eat next month? Where will you go to work? All the independent media outlets have closed down.”

Only the editor-in-chief Elizaveta Prinz, who always took his side in conflicts, and the interns recruited in early 2022, including Ksenia Mironova, remained with Kostylev. It is at Readovka that she will make a career on Z-propaganda and interview the Russian-appointed heads of the occupied regions.

At the same time, according to the employees, “big money” came to the publication. On February 28, at a general meeting, Kostylev promised to double the salaries of all the remaining employees. On the same day, he publicly instructed the editor-in-chief, Elizaveta Prinz, to “buy up all the advertising opportunities” to promote the Telegram channel. The Telemetr service recorded a sharp increase in subscribers, which journalists attributed to an active advertising campaign. At the same time, judging by the screenshots available to ASTRA, under the first posts about the war, part of the audience reacted sharply — unsubscribing and directly accusing the publication of working “on order”. In the comments under the news about the “special operation”.

At the same time, the publication begins to scale dramatically.

On March 25, the readovka.world domain is registered, and on March 30, the English-language website and Telegram channel Readovka World are launched. A separate team with foreign language skills is recruited for this project. By the summer, Readovka has at least six correspondents in Donbas, including Rostislav Shorokhov, Igor Linin, Yaroslav Vorobyov, Igor Chekanov, and Anastasia Yelsukova.

At the same time, the editorial office is looking for a personal bodyguard for Kostylev with a salary of about 150 thousand rubles and security for the office. Employees of the Smolensk editorial office rent apartments in Moscow. As a result of the first year of work, Readovka is moving from the old cramped office, renting a new one on February 28, 2023, with a total area of 1588 sq. m. in the business center “Banny, 9” on Mira Avenue. Currently, these premises are offered for rent on Avito. First an announcement about the office of 1337 sq. m. was placed in August 2025 with a rate of 1 million 99 thousand rubles per month, second, with an area of 251 sq. m., in September 2025 with a rate of 5 million 185 thousand rubles per month.

For a publication that had recently been almost intimate, this was a sharp increase in budget.

A separate channel “Explains Readovka” appears, where texts with direct calls to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure are published. In the Telegram channel itself, shelling of the neighboring country seems to cause a lot of fun — for example, a powerful shelling of Nikolaev on May 5 was called “night drum and bass.” Readovka also starts producing its own branded merchandise — black T-shirts with the inscription Warcore and an image of falling bombs. In one of these, on June 10, 2022, Kostylev flaunted at a meeting with fans in Donetsk, and many of the editorial staff also wear them.

How Kostylev and the curators “treated” their employees for “severe psychological trauma”

On February 28, 2022, Mikhail Potepkin, who worked in the Middle East and Africa in structures associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, comes to the office. He participates in editorial meetings, and employees perceive him as a person “from the owners”. Hence the rumors that later appeared in the media that Readovka allegedly came under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin. However, then everyone saw that Potepkin does not dispose of money, but asks for it from Kostylev (for example, to rent a three-room apartment).

According to former employees of the publication, he regularly participated in editorial meetings and actually provided a kind of ideological training for journalists.

ASTRA has an audio recording of the editorial board’s banquet on March 1, 2022. In it, Potepkin convinces the remaining journalists to accept what is happening as an inevitable and professional mission. He speaks about the need to approach the war in a cynical and pragmatic manner:

“If we approach this with a little cannibalistic cynicism, at least we’ll have work to do. The work will be intense and interesting. <…> Today, you’re on the front lines, fulfilling your duty… it just so happens that you’re in this position. <….> Putin has deliberately challenged us… Let’s be honest, this is not our choice; it’s the choice of one individual. And this individual’s choice is understandable: “I have the right.” And all of this is a global strategic opportunity for you as a media corporation.”

At the same time, he uses historical and ideological rhetoric typical of Russian propaganda, claiming that Ukrainians are “as Russian as we are.” He also attempts to psychologically “reprogram” the editorial staff, saying, “You have a severe psychological injury. You need to be treated. We will definitely treat you.”

In the same recording, Kostylev boasts about how he managed to remove the block on the Readovka website by Roskomnadzor in a matter of days, and how he met with Vladimir Tabak, the general director of the Kremlin-affiliated organizations Dialog and Dialog Regions, which coordinate state-sponsored internet propaganda.

“Apparently, before the war, they gave the order to block Readovka. But they didn’t know that a war would happen, did they? So on Friday evening, when the order reached the specific executors who didn’t understand anything, Readovka was blocked. However, in those three days, we managed to become the main patriotic publication, which is quite surprising. When I announced that Readovka had been blocked, I received messages from a significant number of influential individuals, who said, “Lekh, we will solve your problem.” After some time, Larin seems to be ready to back down. Subbotin [deputy head of the RCN Vadim Subbotin, – note ASTRA], who made the decision, is also already backing down. And somehow, magically, we are already meeting with Tabak, and then everything started moving. Subbotin, who, in short, made this decision, this is the deputy head of the RCN, played a key role, oddly enough, in all that happened.”

Kostylev also discusses Readovka’s role in the new media system and claims that the publication could become even more influential than Life after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Moreover, he describes how he allegedly had to personally “negotiate” with the Baza Telegram channel instead of Aram Gabrelyanov, a media manager and founder of the Life (LifeNews) holding company, who had long been considered a key player in the pro-government media environment.

“Today, instead of Aram [Gabrelyanov, — note ASTRA] I solved problems with Baza”. Aram, the bitch, can not agree with the “Base”, I call the “Base” and say: “You’re fu*king.” F*ck him, you f*cking old degenerate… Any normal editorial offices in this situation should break. Because it’s a big challenge.”

In the audio recording, Kostylev also mentions topics that his publication will not write about, such as conscripts in the “special military operation”:

“I’ll tell you right away, if God forbid it leaks, we don’t write about it. I’m warning you right away. They’re there.”

According to former employees, from the very beginning of the invasion, Kostylev regularly disappeared for several hours during the day, returning with new “briefings.” On occasion, he would leave not alone, but with Elizaveta Prinz or Mikhail Potepkin, and they would later mention in passing that they were attending “briefings” for media representatives under the leadership of Vladimir Tabak, the aforementioned head of the Dialog NGO.

All doubts were finally dispelled on March 15, when Potepkin accidentally forwarded a long email with instructions (on what topics to cover and how to cover them) to the general editorial chat “Agenda” from a certain Daria, sent to him “as a result of the meeting.” Given the user’s nickname @bogdandar1 and the photo displayed in their profile, it was Daria Bogdanova, the Deputy General Director of the Dialog NGO.

At the same time, another important employee appears in the editorial office — Kirill Solok. In the future, he will be called the “chief analyst ” of Readovka. Solok at that time was the head of the Public Relations and Information Policy Department of the Smolensk region, as well as the chief of staff of the Smolensk regional branch of Unarmia. In the future, it is with Solok that Kostylev will create two NGOs for drones. Solok himself will leave the publication at about the same time as Kostylev-in the summer of 2025. It is unknown whether there are any suspicions against him.

On March 16, 2022, Kostylev sent a message to the editorial chat: “We have a quota of 10 people for the concert on Friday,” referring to the March 18 rally at Luzhniki, “Za Mir Bez Nazisma,” which was held to mark the 8th anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. The employees were essentially being sent to the event as a mobilized массовка.

In parallel, Readovka’s publications begin to massively repost the accounts of regional public institutions on VKontakte — schools, administrations, and even kindergartens. These pages are managed through the Regional Management Centers, which are overseen by the Dialog NGO.

Through massive financial influence, Readovka’s main Telegram channel grew from 400,000 subscribers in February 2022 to 1 million in April 2022. By early 2023, it would have reached 1.7 million, and at its peak, in the spring of 2025, it would have reached 2.7 million (after which the number of subscribers would begin to decline, currently standing at around 2 million).

Kostylev himself publicly admitted that he had received money for propaganda from the Presidential Administration only in 2026, in an interview with Oleg Kashin, shortly before his arrest.

Thus, Readovka transformed from a controversial but autonomous media outlet into a scaled-up pro-war project with a regional network, an English-language focus, its own corps of war correspondents, centralized instructions, and systemic support through government distribution channels.

It was during this period, in the spring and summer of 2022, that a new element appeared in Alexey Kostylev’s biography: mushrooming companies that would later lead to the establishment of a defense-focused organization.

Kostylev’s businesses

“And the villages with many children, and the clothes, and the journalism, and the charitable foundations, and everything else. He even spread his influence to other continents. He is a talented person, and the results of his work were visible and tangible. And he created all of this from scratch, starting with a local public page,” wrote the Z-channel “Larkin” after Kostylev’s detention and arrest.

Indeed, in the four years of the full-scale war, the editor-in-chief of the Telegram channel has tried his hand at many businesses, from a patriotic clothing brand to a drone manufacturing company.

One of the first such projects was the clothing brand 24. New Russian Brand. The company with this name was registered in Moscow in 2024. Formally, it was engaged in the wholesale trade of clothing and textiles. Together with another company owned by Kostylev, Velvet Tim LLC, registered in November 2022 in the Smolensk region, the brand attempted to sell stylized “pre-revolutionary” clothing, including quilted jackets, shirts, vests, and other garments in “traditional Russian style.”

Rospatent registered industrial designs for these companies, such as models of vests and shirts. The products were positioned as “traditional Russian merchandise.” Some items cost up to 70,000 rubles.

However, the business was not very successful. According to financial statements, Velvet Team’s main activity in 2023 generated only a few million rubles in revenue per year. A significant portion of this revenue was spent on Kostylev’s own salary.

In parallel, Kostylev tried to launch another project related to the war. In the spring of 2022, at one of the meetings at the Ministry of Defense, where representatives of loyal media were invited, the problem of a lack of winter uniforms for the Russian military was discussed. According to sources The Bell and Medusa, Kostylev offered to take on part of the supply of warm clothing.

The plan was to purchase winter down jackets in China and supply them to the front. The procurement was organized by entrepreneur Ilya Prinz, the husband of Readovka’s editor-in-chief, Elizaveta Prinz. Through the companies “Prinz Corporation” and “Velvet Team,” it was planned to import regular jackets and modify them by adding military insignia. According to sources, the contract seemed promising, as the Ministry of Defense was purchasing winter clothing sets ranging from 15,000 to 100,000 to 200,000 rubles, depending on the fabric characteristics.

However, the project ultimately failed. When Kostylev’s team completed negotiations with a Chinese supplier and was ready to pay for the purchase, Chinese companies began blocking the export of khaki jackets to Russia due to the risk of secondary sanctions. As a result, the deliveries never materialized.

After this episode, relations within the project deteriorated dramatically. Mikhail Potepkin soon left the editorial office.

Nevertheless, Kostylev’s attempts to integrate into the “military economy” did not end there. In the following years, he registered a network of companies, ranging from hotel projects to firms involved in the production of machinery.

In the Smolensk region, there are companies called “Rukhanskiye Ozera” and “Rukhanskiye Korsiki”, which are formally engaged in the hotel business and recreation centers. In 2023, the company “Sovereign Economy” was registered, as well as the charity organization “Readovka Pomogaet” (helps), which focuses on fundraising and providing assistance to the military.

In 2024, Kostylev’s business landscape also includes companies with a more technological focus. Among them is Genadmix, which is listed as a scientific research and development company. Another of Kostylev’s companies, Dunai, is formally engaged in software development.

Also, within a few weeks, two companies with the same name, NGO Oborona, are registered.

The first company was established in May 2024 in Balashikha, near Moscow. Its activities include metal machining, production of radar equipment, aircraft launchers, and aircraft and related equipment. The founders are Alexey Kostylev (75%) and the aforementioned official Kirill Solok (25%).

A second company with the same name was registered in June 2024 in the Smolensk region. Its profile is also directly related to drones, with the focus on “manufacturing aircraft, including space-based aircraft.” Both companies have a minimal authorized capital, and their tax reports indicate a very small number of employees.

At the same time, their life cycle is very short. In 2025, both entities will be put into liquidation proceedings. A few months later, defense contracts will become a key element in the criminal case against the founder of Readovka.

A company in a village with three employees, drones, and a turnover of two billion rubles

Within Kostylev’s network of companies, it is Velvet Team LLC that appears to be a financial “concentrator”: with a minimal staff and a rural address, it shows turnover that is not comparable to the publicly known projects of the Readovka owner.

The company was registered on November 1, 2022, in the village of Rukhan, Yershichsky District, Smolensk Region. The authorized capital is 10,000 rubles. Kostylev himself is the founder and general director of the company. Although the company’s primary activity is “wholesale non-specialized trade,” it also operates in various other sectors, including clothing retail, cargo transportation rental, building construction, and equipment sales.

According to the company’s financial statements, Velvet Team’s revenue reached 2.1 billion rubles in 2024, and its net profit was 289.6 million rubles. Compared to the previous year, the revenue growth exceeded 47,000%.

According to tax reports, the company’s average employee count is three.

Previously, Velvet Team was listed as one of the companies through which Kostylev planned to develop his clothing brand, but the sales of these products, according to financial reports, could not explain the billions of dollars in revenue.

By 2024, the financial picture changes dramatically, with the company’s turnover increasing by hundreds of times.

At the same time, none of Kostylev’s public projects — neither the clothing brand, nor the media projects, nor the tourism initiatives in the Smolensk region — explain such a large increase in revenue. Currently, the 24. New Russian Brand store in Moscow on Pyatnitskaya Street, according to Yandex Maps, is closed, and the brand’s social media accounts have not been updated since April 2025.

The answer may lie in another area of the company’s operations – drones.

In 2024, the company was the applicant for a number of EAEU conformity declarations for “household quadcopters” — including models that are widely used by the Russian military in the war against Ukraine (including the DJI Matrice and DJI Mavic line with thermal imagers, as well as Autel). In the documents, the manufacturer is the Chinese concern Dajiang Innovation Technology Co. (DJI), which is under US sanctions.

Velvet Team remains the only company in Kostylev’s business circle that demonstrates such turnover. Most of the other legal entities registered by him either show losses or are already in the process of liquidation.

Kostylev probably named the company after his common-law wife, Ekaterina Barkhatova, who testified in his defense at the time of his arrest. She was also mentioned in Readovka posts as the “founder and ideological mastermind” of Kostylev’s brand of quilted jackets and shirts. According to a Mediazona correspondent in the courtroom, she is expected to be questioned as a witness in the case. Barkhatova did not respond to ASTRA’s inquiries.

Accident in Kostyleva Village

In the fall of 2024, Alexey Kostylev completely disappeared from the public eye for several weeks. On October 26, he was involved in a severe ATV accident in the Smolensk region. The accident occurred in the village of Rukhan, Yershichsky District, where Kostylev had been developing several of his projects in recent years.

According to ASTRA sources, his all-terrain vehicle overturned at high speed. Kostylev was found under the vehicle in critical condition. Doctors diagnosed basal skull fracture, severe traumatic brain injury, brain contusion, pelvic bone fractures, and internal organ injuries. He was hospitalized unconscious and placed on a ventilator. He was in a coma for some time.

Later, Kostylev was transferred to Moscow for further treatment. It was only a few weeks later that it was reported that he had regained consciousness and was beginning to recover.

It is noteworthy that the accident occurred in Rouhani, the location of a significant number of his business ventures, including the Barhat Tim firm, as well as projects around a recreation center and the so-called “multi-child villages.”

For Kostylev, Rukhan and the neighboring villages were not just a “dacha,” but part of a publicly promoted project that began as an idea for an ethnographic resort and was later reshaped into a “base” for resettling and supporting large families, including those from former Soviet countries. Readovka described the “Large Family Villages” initiative as a “revival of life in traditional Russian lands.” The project’s promotional materials also featured statements by high-ranking officials, such as Elena Nikolaeva, Director of Special Projects at Rostec, who described individual housing as a “foundation for the revival of family life.”

Local residents at the public hearings on August 23, 2024, negatively evaluated the construction: “To date, the interests of the local population have already been affected by the activities of the customer LLC Corsica Rukhanskaya: public roads have been destroyed and blocked, which forces residents of neighboring villages to travel a long way to get to a medical center, a store, a post office. The bank of the Iput River and the beach have been destroyed, and residents’ access to the reservoir, where we, our children and grandchildren, used to relax, has been restricted. A huge hole has been dug near the cemetery by the customer, which could lead to an environmental disaster.”

At the same time, Readovka publicly reported in detail only about one move of the Morozov family with ten children from Latvia. The publication described it as a “special operation” and “flight from oppression”: in Readovka’s publications, the family was presented as “fleeing” due to pressure from the Latvian authorities because of their pro-Russian position. After that, no other relocated families were reported in the project’s open communications. Kostylev himself, in August 2025, wrote that he was living “not in a dacha, but in an unfinished and unprepared project called ‘multi-child villages,’” and added, “I hope that the multi-child families who are willing to live here will eventually receive this, and all that remains is to finish it.”

After the ATV accident, Kostylev was out of the media holding for several months.

Loss of Readovka

By 2025, Readovka was experiencing significant personnel changes. According to several Telegram channels affiliated with law enforcement agencies, employees who were considered to be in Kostylev’s inner circle began to leave the media holding company. The Telegram channel VChK-OGPU claimed that several key employees had already been dismissed or were in the process of being dismissed from the project, including Elizaveta and Ilya Prinz, Yaroslav Vorobyov, Ksenia Mironova, Diana Stepanova, and her mother, Elena Stepanova, who served as the chief accountant of Readovka.

According to the channel, the personnel changes may have been related to inspections by the prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Committee for misuse of budget funds.

The same publications claimed that Readovka’s media network had started disabling infrastructure related to the promotion of Telegram channels. In particular, they referred to the so-called “bot farms,” which, according to the channel’s authors, could account for 30 to 95 percent of the audience for certain projects. It was reported that approximately 700,000 bots had been removed from Readovka’s main Telegram channel, and an additional 700,000 were expected to be removed in the coming months.

Officially, this, as well as BAZA’s information about the reduction of the number of employees from 100 to 60, was not confirmed by the Readovka editorial office. However, Readovka itself soon announced a change in ownership and management of the holding. The publication stated that “nothing will change for the reader or partners,” and that the editorial policy would continue to be determined by journalists and editors. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRLE), Andrey Tkachenko, a political strategist and the curator of the Dialog NGO in the Ural Federal District, is currently the director and holder of 100% of the media holding’s shares.

According to current Readovka employees who spoke to ASTRA, the Princes were “asked to leave” the publication in 2025, shortly before the channel was acquired by a new owner. Additionally, they were expecting a child. All other employees retained their positions.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, on July 22, 2025, Kostylev’s legal entities, the Kherson-Zaporozhye Channel Grid, were liquidated: Zaporizhye LLC and Khersonka.Ru LLC.

After the incident, Kostylev himself ended up at RT, claiming in court that he was employed by the company. In November 2025, a propaganda outlet reported that he was “working with RT on a series of films about the rehabilitation of special military operation fighters.” This is the only mention of him as an RT employee.

Readovka’s denunciations and hierarchy

The financial problems at Readovka are indirectly evidenced by employee reviews published on the Dream Job platform, where several users complained about salary cuts in the editorial office in the spring of 2025. Additionally, they describe Readovka as a small company with a strict hierarchy, where key positions are held by people close to the management.

Several reviews mention an atmosphere of denunciations and competition for proximity to the authorities. One of the users writes that “there are people in the team who will pass on your personal opinion to the editor behind your back without asking,” and career opportunities in the editorial office are limited, since “all the leadership positions have long been divided among their own people.”

Other reviews describe a strong dependence of career growth on personal relationships with management: “If you want to earn a lot of money and have a successful career, you need to build trusting relationships with your superiors.” However, employees often complain about low salaries, lack of medical insurance, and irregular work schedules. Some users also mention that “management only treats their acquaintances well,” and that employees can be easily replaced.

War correspondents-entrepreneurs

According to open data that ASTRA studied, several people from Readovka’s inner circle registered as sole proprietors in the fall of 2022.

One of them was Igor Chekanov, a war correspondent for the publication. After starting work at Readovka, he registered as an individual entrepreneur on November 1, 2022. The list of activities for his individual entrepreneurship was extremely broad, ranging from wholesale trade and electronics sales to IT consulting, equipment repair, and logistics services. The listed activities included the sale of electronic equipment, information technology, communication equipment repair, and transportation. Formally, Chekanov’s company existed for almost two years and was liquidated on October 4, 2024. Chekanov himself left the company.

During the same period, Elizaveta Prinz, Kostylev’s closest associate, also became an entrepreneur. In 2022, she hired her unemployed husband, Ilya Prinets, who had never worked in media before, at Readovka.

Her first individual enterprise was registered on November 14, 2022. The main activity was wholesale non-specialized trade. This structure existed until April 2024, after which it was closed.

However, a month later, Prinz registered a new individual entrepreneurship in May 2024. This time, the list of activities is directly related to textile products: clothing production, trade in textile products, and sale of clothing and accessories, including online sales. In fact, all the declared activities coincide with Kostylev’s projects around the clothing brand “24. New Russian Brand.” This second individual entrepreneurship was liquidated by Prince in January 2026, after his departure from Readovka.

Another employee of the publication, Yaroslav Vorobyev, has a similar story.

In 2022-2023, he figured in the Readovka Telegram channel as a war correspondent. However, later, his role in the project structure changed: by 2025, Vorobyov was already introduced as the head of the Readovka Department of Strategic Development. In this status, he, in particular, publicly signed a cooperation agreement with the Russian Football Union.

Like other employees of the project, Vorobyov is also registered as an individual entrepreneur. Among the activities he has declared are the trade of telecommunications equipment, wholesale trade of electronics, and the sale of used goods. Vorobyov is still working at Readovka.

According to data leaks studied by ASTRA, during the same period, Readovka employees actively moved between the occupied territories of Ukraine and China. For example, Ilya Prinz traveled to Donetsk in the spring of 2022, and in October 2023, he visited Mariupol. Elizaveta Prinz herself visited Melitopol and Kherson in August 2022, and then Donetsk in December 2022. In January 2023, she traveled to Melitopol and Mariupol again. There is reason to believe that it was the Prinz couple who ran Readovka’s correspondents’ offices in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Later, China appeared in Kostylev’s employees’ routes: Prinz traveled to Beijing from July 27 to August 3, 2023. Military correspondents Yaroslav Vorobyov and Igor Chekanov also visited Beijing in July and September 2023.

Alexey Kostylev himself traveled to China twice during the same period:
— to Beijing from June 30 to July 6, 2023,
— to Guangzhou from September 10 to 16, 2023.

According to a source in the Readovka editorial office, the employees were told that the trips were related to a cooperation project with the Russian Football Union. However, according to the source, Kostylev’s own trips were “on business” that the editorial office was unaware of.

This was unusual: according to his employees, Kostylev had hardly traveled outside Russia before 2023, and had only traveled to Serbia before that. ASTRA does not know if his trips were related to another business project.

The version about the “signatories” and the reaction of the employees

After Kostylev’s arrest, a number of Telegram channels began publishing versions suggesting that some of the documents and contracts were allegedly signed not by the owner of Readovka himself, but by the editorial staff. For example, the Telegram channel “EZ” claimed that some transactions may have been conducted through individuals close to the media manager. According to the channel, this could have occurred during a period when Kostylev was not actively involved in operational matters.

However, an ASTRA source within Readovka calls such versions highly exaggerated. According to him, Kostylev controlled all management decisions and did not allow any of his employees to sign documents independently without his knowledge.

“Only one specific person is to blame for what happened, and he is now trying to present the situation as if he was just a figurehead,” the source said. According to him, the company had a strict chain of command, where no significant decisions were made without consulting Kostylev.

According to the interlocutor, some financial schemes within the editorial office were only discussed during the period when Kostylev was out of the company’s management after the accident.

“It wasn’t until after the accident that any shady activities began to surface. Prior to that, no one in the management team was aware of anything, as he had not disclosed any information to anyone,” the source stated.

According to the source, certain commercial initiatives, including contracts related to military supplies, were carried out through other legal entities that were not directly associated with the publication.

Author: Anna Snegireva