The Ural news agency Ura.ru, commissioned by the Ministry of Defense, developed a PR strategy for Colonel General Alexander Lapin. Two current and one former employees of the publication told about this to the Proekt publication. alt=»1″ />“How can you not remember that they put a gun to head?» Near Svatovo, Colonel General Lapin tried to return the mobilized to the front line, threatening with weapons
Lapin is in command of the Central Military District, during the invasion of Ukraine he leads the group of troops «Center». In May, it became known that he awarded his son, who participated in the failed offensive in the Chernigov direction.
Mediazona published eyewitness accounts of how in October Lapin put a gun to the head of a mobilized man who led his company out of the shelling and demanded to return to the front line.
head of Ura.ruMikhail Vyugin instructed the exclusive information search department to “develop a content plan” in support of Lapin in early October. This happened after the general was criticized in a telegram by the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the head of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, because of the surrender of Liman in the Donetsk region.
Anonymous journalists from Ura.ru said that, according to Vyugin , the campaign was ordered to him by «one of the towers of the Ministry of Defense.» The journalists who participated in its development received a bonus: one interlocutor of the «Project» estimated it at «one and a half salaries», the other at ten thousand rubles.
Ura.ru published news about posts by Kadyrov and Prigozhin about Lapin, and a few days later released two columns with expert comments that it was “not an accusation specifically against General Lapin”, but “higher people” — the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. The criticism was called «a dangerous situation for the Russian army.»
In total, since October 1, Ura.ru has released 35 laudatory materials about Lapin, the Project calculated. They came out almost daily. In the beginning, it was news about how former military men and deputies «stand up» or «come out in support» of Lapin. In other materials, the surrender of Liman was explained by the fact that Lapin “saved his personnel” and “deceived the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
From the end of October, they began to publish “notes of comrade Lapin”, memoirs of “generals and privates” about him, as well as the story of a subordinate how Lapin sent a military man with appendicitis in his helicopter. Ura.ru called materials about the general “one of the most popular [series] on [its] website.”
Ura.ru articles about Lapin were posted by major telegram channels, including military ones, the Project notes. According to their interlocutors, the Ura.ru editorial staff started chats with the administrators of the largest channels, including Rybar, where they threw their articles about Lapin for distribution.
Vyugin and the Ura.ru editorial staff did not respond to a request «Project».
Investigators also analyzed posts about Lapin in military telegram channels. Several channels — Turned on the Z War, Operative Reports, Older than Edda, and Operation Z: Russian Spring Military Commanders — in their opinion, published posts that were “suspiciously similar to advertising.” Among them is a video in which Lapin stops a car with a Soviet banner of victory in order to give a package of groceries to a grandmother sitting by the fence.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the share of channels among the 25 largest that reacted negatively to key events of the war, decreased. The «project» linked this in time with the June meeting of President Vladimir Putin with military commanders during the SPIEF and their meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu a few days later.