The founder of “My friend, you are a transformer” Egor Mostovshchikov announced the closure of the project

Egor Mostovshchikov, the founder of the samizdat “My friend, you are a transformer,” announced on his Facebook that the project would be closed on December 31.

According to Mostovshchikov, he made this decision a long time ago and worked all year to implement it. The founder of "Batenka" points out that he could not afford to close the publication before he paid off all his debts. Mostovshchikov expects to make the last payments before the end of the year.

This decision has neither economic nor political reasons. Despite the fact that today making an independent and sustainable media is even more suicide than it has always been, it can still be done and, most importantly, it is necessary. Right now, when every day publications are closed, broken down under pressure, journalists are arrested, imprisoned, persecuted, expelled from the country, we need to work and continue to tell readers how the world outside the window works in general. I just don’t want to do samizdat “My friend, you are a transformer” anymore.

• Egor Mostovshchikov founded "Batenka" in 2014. In July 2017, together with the second founder, Anton Yarosh, and the creator of the news aggregator Breaking Mad, Zalina Marshenkulova, he announced the launch of the Mamihlapinatana publishing house.
• In October 2020, two microfinance organizations filed a lawsuit against Mostovshchikov and Yarosh demanding the return of a debt totaling 12.7 million rubles. In December of the same year, the Mamihlapinatana publishing house ceased to exist . The publications included in it, including "My friend", continued to work.