NGL edition. media and Grunt found out that the founders of one of the most popular Ukrainian telegram channels, Trukha Ukraine, have a connection with a friend of the son of former Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
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As noted in the investigation of journalists, the Telegram channel appeared in November 2019. Maxim Lavrinenko, a Kharkiv resident, calls himself the founder and claims that the money for the promotion of the new channel was “given to him by friends from the IT industry.” According to Lavrinenko, for more than two years, the Telegram channel has increased its audience to 190,000, and this number of subscribers was at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Then Trukha began to publish photos and videos of missile strikes, for which it received criticism, but its audience increased. The founder admits that he was repeatedly approached by the SBU and the military with a request not to publish certain information. Last year, Maxim Lavrinenko was introduced as the founder and owner of Trukha, and the Telegram channel began publishing messages on his behalf.
However, since 2019, the media has had information that the channel is sponsored by local businessman Volodymyr Lytvyn, the founder of the Turboseo business promotion company and a friend of the son of ex-Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov. The media also collected publications of the Telegram channel, where they remember Arsen Avakov, which ceased in February 2023.
… there are a lot of publications of “Trukha” about Arsen Avakov, in which he acts as an expert and philanthropist. These were clippings from an interview with Avakov, as well as individual messages about him or reposts from his telegram channel. True, since February 2023, Arsen Avakov has not been mentioned on Rabbit anymore, the journalists point out.
According to investigators, Lytvyn became known after the corruption case about “Avakov’s backpacks”. In 2018, he took the blame in criminal proceedings on the embezzlement of UAH 16 million of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the purchase of backpacks. In this case, Lytvyn appeared together with Alexander Avakov, but only he was given a suspended sentence.
In the Kharkiv media environment, they say that during the ministerial cadence of Arsen Avakov, Trukha had access to police videos, and this exclusive helped the channel grow its audience, the Grunt publication points out.
This is a typical news aggregator story. They publish information without verifying it. They do not disdain content, even if it may play along with Russian propaganda. We do not know whether they are doing it consciously (playing along with propaganda – ed.) or not. It is quite possible that they follow the hype, and on this wave of hype they pick up and spread Russian theses. Here the fate of irresponsibility and the pursuit of money is great. They have quite large – or some of the largest – advertising budgets. And these advertising budgets do not diversify at all white advertising, gray advertising, black advertising. This is a big minus, because there is a lot of hidden advertising, black PR. This is a “vicious circle”: they print hype – to keep monetization – because it brings money, – explains information hygiene expert Oksana Moroz.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.