Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via Reuters
Russia’s federal media watchdog has a secret team of people tasked with protecting Vladimir Putin’s ego—and alerting the president’s spooks should there be any online mentions of him as a “bald dwarf,” Hitler wannabe, or a “thief.”
That’s according to the independent outlet iStories, one of several news organizations to reveal the surreal findings of a leak from Roskomnadzor this week. The agency was targeted by a group of Belarusian hackers late last year that said they had breached an internal network and made off with a ton of data from a division tasked with “regulating” the media. That data was subsequently handed over to independent Russian journalists who released their investigations this week.
Among the most disturbing revelations, staffers at the federal agency compile reports on all “negative publications” about Putin and use an internal messaging system to brief the presidential administration and Russia’s security services on all of the president’s critics.