The owner of Sib.fm removed the announcement of Navalny’s rally at the request of one of the publication’s sponsors

The owner of the Sib.fm publication, Andrei Ksenchuk, said on his Facebook page on September 27 that he deleted the announcement of Alexei Navalny’s speech in Novosibirsk at the request of “people who financially help the publication.”

We are talking about businessman Viktor Ignatov. He was a senator from the Novosibirsk region, and now heads the interregional coordination council of United Russia.

The announcement of Navalny’s speech in Novosibirsk was published on September 18, but the news was soon removed from the site. As a result, Sib.fm editor-in-chief Sergei Samoilenko decided to resign from the publication: “The owner made a decision, in my opinion, senseless and even idiotic. I scratched my head and realized that I was not ready to work in such parameters,” Samoilenko said. - It’s so stupid to use a resource - it’s hammering nails with a microscope. Well, that's their business. [The decision was] that we would not write about the rally, and that was enough for me. I think it was generally decided to pretend that Navalny does not exist in nature.”

Owner Andrei Ksenchuk wrote that he does not sympathize with Navalny “on a purely human basis,” and accused the former editor-in-chief of inaction: “Someone will say that fighting for the principles of non-interference in editorial policy, defending rights and opportunities is the direct task of the editor-in-chief. And I probably agree. Alas, there were no objections, or at least attempts to object, from Sergei.”

The Insider notes that three more news items were removed from the Sib.fm website: mentioning rallies in Novosibirsk , Omsk and Krasnoyarsk .