‘He wants to cleanse himself’

Billionaire Alexander Mamut left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and allegedly plans to launch a liberal media outlet in exile

Russian billionaire and former owner of the tech and media company Rambler Group Alexander Mamut left Russia shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now, multiple sources tell Meduza that the businessman intends to open a liberal media enterprise of some kind and has evidently consulted Russian exile and anti-war economist Sergey Guriev on related issues. Though Mamut has almost no profitable assets left in Russia, he has previously had multiple ties to Kremlin-controlled and state-owned enterprises. Here’s what we know about Mamut’s apparent plans.

Disclosure of a possible conflict of interest. Svetlana Reiter, one of the authors of the Russian version of this text, is a former Lenta.ru editor. In 2014, Mamut fired the publication’s editor-in-chief, Galina Timchenko. Meduza’s founders, Galina Timchenko and Ivan Kolpakov (another Lenta.ru ex-employee), did not see this story prior to publication.

Meduza has learned that Alexander Mamut, billionaire co-owner of Russian search engine Rambler, left Russia shortly after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Four sources, including a member of the Forbes Russia list, two of Mamut’s acquaintances, and person in the billionaire’s circle confirmed to Meduza that Mamut has left Russia.

One of Mamut’s acquaintances explained that Mamut moved to Europe after the February 2022 invasion began, adding that he now splits his time between the U.K. and France. Mamut has long standing ties to France and has called the country “close to ideal,” supporting numerous French projects in Russia. In 2018, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts and des Lettres (the French Order of Arts and Letters).

A Meduza source who travels in Mamut’s circles emphasizes that the businessman “really doesn’t want to be sanctioned.” In 2018, he was included on the U.S. Treasury’s “Putin List” of prominent Russians with suspicious (according to the U.S. authorities) ties to the Kremlin. However, he has not yet faced any restrictions.

The source adds: “He wants to become a ‘good Russian’ and to cleanse himself as much as possible. With that in mind, he decided to create a medium to promote the liberal agenda. It’s not clear right now what form that will take. It might be a print outlet, or maybe radio. It’s possible that he’ll limit himself to a foundation to support other media outlets.” Another Meduza source familiar with Alexander Mamut’s plans called the possible structure a “media holding company.”

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Two economists known to Meduza report that Mamut has consulted economist Sergey Guriev about the possibility of creating a new company. Guriev is provost of Sciences Po in Paris. He fled Russia in 2013, fearing criminal prosecution for his expert testimony arguing that the owners of the oil company Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were convicted and imprisoned unjustly. Guriev now openly opposes the war. Russia’s Justice Ministry recently designated him as a “foreign agent.”

Guriev confirmed to Meduza that he’s met with Mamut a few times in recent months. “We discussed the possibility of financing a research project at Sciences Po,” he said. The economist emphasized, however, that he’s “never heard” that Mamut plans to launch any kind of media project.

Does this guy have anything left?

Mamut has essentially no known profitable assets left in Russia. Through the investment company A&NN, he still owns the country’s largest movie-theater chains, Cinema Park and Formula Kino, but he left his post as chairman of the company’s board of directors in September 2022. The chain, incidentally, is roughly 19 billion rubles ($234 billion) in debt to Trust Bank. It’s not clear how the company can pay off this debt. In 2022, against the backdrop of war and the official exit from Russia of the major Hollywood studios, the company’s revenue fell by nearly half. The two entities that make up the cinema network together reported more than two billion rubles ($24 million) in losses last year.

Mamut also owned a stake in the gold-mining operation Polymetal through the Cyprus-based company Vitalbond. However, in 2019, Vitalbond’s share fell below the official threshold (5 percent) for business information disclosures. In the last available annual report, from 2021, Vitalbond was not listed as a Polymetal shareholder.

Mamut also has no major media assets. He sold 45 percent of the Rambler holding company to Sberbank in 2020. He had been a co-owner of the company since 2012.

In his capacity as Rambler co-owner, Mamut was known for several scandalous staffing decisions in the world of Russian media. In 2013, he appointed Svetlana Babaeva, a former employee of state-run media companies RIA Novosti and Izvestiya, as the head of the ostensibly independent outlet Gazeta.ru. The decision was made on the day of Moscow’s mayoral elections (September 8), when Alexey Navalny won more than 27 percent of the vote and posed a real threat to the incumbent, Sergey Sobyanin (and came close to forcing a runoff vote). By that point, Gazeta.ru’s politics department, which covered Moscow’s massive 2011–2012 anti-Putin protests in depth, had been completely remade.

In the spring of 2014, it was Alexander Mamut who fired Galina Timchenko from her position as editor-in-chief of the independent outlet Lenta.ru. After that, nearly all of the outlet’s journalists left the publication. Timchenko and other former Lenta.ru journalists launched Meduza not long afterwards. (Perhaps you’ve heard of it?)

Alexander Mamut commented on this article to Lenta.ru, saying that he has no plans to open an opposition media enterprise and calling the piece “lies from start to finish.” He added, “Just like when Meduza has written about me before, this news is provocative, a pure lie, and aimed at one purpose — taking revenge on me [for firing] Galina Timchenko.”