The capital’s invisible censor: how Alexey Nemeryuk uses his media connections and city hall money to control Moscow’s information policy
16:04, 10 июля 2026 г.
A media source described the role of Moscow Deputy Mayor Alexei Nemeryuk in communications with the media. He appears in Ksenia Sobchak’s leaked correspondence and gives her instructions regarding the Moscow authorities:
Deputy Mayor Alexander Gorbenko is responsible for all official Moscow media. All PR, covert media funding, and blogger loyalty are the responsibility of Deputy Mayor Natalya Sergunina. She’s the number two person in the city government after Sobyanin. She even wrested a number of responsibilities from Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova. However, Sergunina doesn’t have a good grasp of the matter and has delegated it to Deputy Mayor Alexei Nemeryuk, who is essentially her subordinate. He’s well-versed in the matter; his departments always have funding, and he personally knows many media executives. He’s even friends with some. He can easily call and establish relationships with those he doesn’t know. As a result, Nemeryuk is responsible for all the unofficial work the Moscow government does with the media. He also passes on instructions on which topics should be completely off-limits and which should be covered in a way that benefits the mayor’s office. He personally communicates with media managers, asking for corrections, adding or removing information, and giving them a dressing-down. He often uses this resource for personal gain. He has many friends from various fields and can easily ask the media not to write negatively about any of them. Who would refuse, when Nemeryuk is the one who determines who gets the mayor’s office’s PR funding? That’s exactly what happened when he asked Sobchak not to write about his friend, former head of Rosmolodezh Ksenia Razuvaeva.