“Everyone makes money the way they know how”

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How the tracking system works

The office of the "Main Radio Frequency Center" is located in Moscow. Its employees monitor “foreign agents”, look for “fakes” about the Russian army, block the media, develop programs for global surveillance of Russians on the Internet, and also protect Vladimir Putin from offensive posts.

Another duty of employees is to draw up reports, which are then sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and other departments through an internal messenger - the “operational interaction cabinet”. The security forces also have access to it.

This messenger has several thematic chats. Having found information objectionable to the authorities, the censor sends it to one of these chats. For example, Andrey Shirshov, an employee of the GRFC, found out at the end of June that Radio Channel Melodiya broadcasts the Ukrainian anthem three times a day, and sent a corresponding denunciation to the Extremism chat. And in the “Destabilization Operatively” chat, employees of the State Humanitarian Center wrote denunciations against those who do not like the fact that schoolchildren are being attracted to collect humanitarian aid to the mobilized.

Some of these denunciations become the reason for administrative and criminal cases, others - for the closure of the media or recognition of them as "foreign agents." In addition, the employees of the GRFC write reports on the so-called points of information tension - these are events and messages that can cause public outcry.

How censors are hired

When hiring for a job at the SRC, potential employees are given characteristics, which, among other things, indicate that the candidate did not participate in rallies in support of Alexei Navalny or other oppositionists.

New employees are sent instructions in which they are asked not to publish “provocative personal content”, not to comment on their work at the GRFC, and not to criticize Roskomnadzor or organizations associated with it.

The GRFC also cooperates with the leading universities of the country: for example, with Moscow State University, Moscow State Law University, Financial University under the Government of Russia. Employees of the GRCHTS give lectures to students, for which they are paid extra 20 thousand rubles, and recruit interns there. Usually they are assigned routine work, but those who "distinguished themselves" are offered to complete a test task and a permanent place.

One of the candidates for the position of censor, for example, was asked to search the Internet for reports about Putin's health. “If possible, identify distributors and primary sources, media persons who also participated in the dissemination of such fakes. Refrain from declaring your political views. Maximum factuality and neutrality,” Kirill Zolotov, head of the monitoring department on duty, wrote to her.

Anastasia Sheremeto, a student of the political faculty of Moscow State University, got another task: she was asked to prepare a certificate about the conflict between the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the Yangulbaev family. When journalists called Sheremeto, she hung up after a short conversation in which she denied that she had done such a test and that she worked as a censor.

Who is watching the Russians

The employees of the GRFC, apparently, are really very afraid of publicity.

Christina Mosenz, 30, is a media monitor. It is her subordinates who draw up certificates for the recognition of people and organizations as “foreign agents”. Once, Mosenz tried to fake her own detention in order not to talk to journalists. When they called her, a man picked up the phone and said that "Kristina Evgenievna has been detained for economic crimes for two days already." However, after a few days, she answered herself. But after the question of why she works for censorship, she asked not to call her again.

In total, more than five thousand people work in the GRCHTS. After the start of the war in Ukraine, the work of the censors became more and many began to quit, but new people always came to their places.

After the GRCHTS data was hacked, many employees closed their social networks and changed their nicknames. The management promised its employees to try to remove information about them from telegram bots by "breaking through" people - and one of the largest services agreed to help the censors. Also, the management even advised its employees to change their passports.

Some employees of the GRFC sometimes still deviate from the rules and, although briefly, still communicate with journalists. For example, Olga Prudnikova, 37-year-old head of the federal media monitoring department, collected certificates from other employees to recognize people as “foreign agents”, and also explained to them how to monitor the media. It was she who instructed to find negative materials “in relation to the current government and the NWO” on the website of the Novaya rasskazh-gazeta. A week after that, the media was blocked.

When asked by a journalist why she was doing this, Prudnikova replied that "everyone earns the way they can."

How much do they pay for denunciations

Ruslan Nesterenko, Acting General Director of the GRFC, receives on average more than 640,000 rubles a month. Igor Ivanov, director of mass media, earns the same. Heads of departments are paid about 100 thousand rubles, excluding bonuses.

There are especially valuable employees for whom management is ready to increase salaries. Andrei Nevzorov, the head of the machine learning department, was "knocked out" a salary of 250 thousand rubles so that he "did not run away."

The main advantage of working in the GRFC for men is the reservation from mobilization. This issue was dealt with by the head of the digital transformation department, Denis Kasimov, and, probably, he managed to ensure that the censors were not taken to the front. For this, he was offered to write out a bonus in the amount of one salary.

When the mobilization had just begun, the censors had no armor and the summons was handed to them right at the workplace. And with bonuses in the company, everything is not as joyful as it seems at first glance. In November 2022, the company's employees complained that there was more work and less wages.

“In general, we are already doing the whole cycle - we are monitoring, adjusting the legal framework, and adjusting the text ... only the salary is getting smaller. <...> We are sitting here, collecting pennies, even taking away pennies for food, ”wrote the duty service officers Konstantin Malinin and Denis Palagichev.

But not all employees of the GRFC write denunciations solely for salaries or benefits from the state. Ruslan Makhalov, a former shift supervisor in the duty monitoring department of the QMS, whose computer was hacked by hackers, believes that the state has the right to censor.

“For all my absolutely healthy dislike of certain phenomena like corruption, hiding facts about it, and the like, it seems to me that the state has the right to protect itself in the way that is accepted by the majority of society in it. But even if the state, for example, does not function as I would like, then I would like to solve these problems at home, do you understand?” - he wrote to reporters, having resigned from the GRChTs.

By the way, it was Makhalov who wrote denunciations to the Prosecutor General's Office on publications that reported on the killings of civilians in Ukraine and the losses of the Russian army.