The Ministry of Justice declared the media to be “foreign agents” of the company that owns Bookmate, its CEO Andrey Baev, as well as the head of the marketing department of the book service and the director of the Individuum and Popcorn books publishing houses, Alexei Dokuchaev. This is stated on the website of the department.
In the list of individuals — «foreign agents» was added by the founder of Dozhd Natalia Sindeeva, TV channel hosts Ekaterina Kotrikadze and Vladimir Romensky, as well as lawyer Mikhail Benyash, Ukrainian political scientist Taras Berezovets and journalist Ivan Yakovina. All of them have Ukraine in the foreign funding information column.
Cut out the word «member», color the text black. As censorship (and more often self-censorship), war and sanctions have made life difficult for publishers and authors of books
In August, Vedomosti sources reported that the Irish company Bookmate Limited, which owns the Bookmate service, will leave the Russian market.
One of the interlocutors of the publication said that the service will remain available for users from Russia, and Yandex, which bought a license to use the Bookmate technology platform in June, will develop it.
Including In the same month, Bookmate Limited withdrew from the capital of the Russian publishing houses Individuum and Popcorn Books. Dokuchaev and Baev sold their shares to Denis Kotov, co-owner of the Chitay-Gorod-Bukvoed network.
In 2021, Popcorn Books published a novel about the love of a pioneer and a counselor, Summer in a Pioneer Tie, with a circulation of 250,000 copies, a record for Russia. The work outraged propagandists and deputies.