MOSCOW — For a man with a $10 million price on his head, Russian military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk is doing little to hide his whereabouts or identity.
Last month, the State Department offered a $10 million reward for information on “Russian malign influencers seeking to interfere in the U.S. elections.” Zvinchuk was among the nine individuals it identified as working for the Telegram channel Rybar, a prominent military blog tracking the war in Ukraine with 1.3 million subscribers.
In a late-night Zoom interview with a Washington Post reporter after finishing his daily video stream for a Russian propaganda outlet on the war in Ukraine, Zvinchuk denied that he or Rybar — which he defines as a think tank “defending its nation’s informational borders” – has interfered “in any way” in the elections.
“Not only do we not touch this, I also understand how toxic this topic is,” he said. “It is used simply as an accusation to try to shut down our resources.”
But Zvinchuk simultaneously claims that Rybar has an affiliated “worldwide” network that consists of over 250 channels in 28 languages. When asked for examples of these channels, however, he said that this was “classified information.”
The emergence of outlets like Rybar is not just a preoccupation for the State Department but also represents a transformation of Russia’s information sphere since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Rybar is part of a new generation of “military bloggers” and war correspondents who moved in to fill a gap in Russia’s propaganda machine as many Russians grew tired of the tirades on state TV and opaque Defense Ministry reports.
The bloggers have gained massive followings and influence since the invasion, meeting with President Vladimir Putin, receiving medals and winning big government grants for their projects.
The creators of Rybar were anonymous for years. Their identities were first made public in 2022 in an investigation by the independent Russian outlet the Bell.
“I was made a public figure against my will,” said Zvinchuk, before acknowledging later in the interview that he is now looking for publicity – “even bad PR.”
Born in Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, Zvinchuk, 33, is a former captain and military translator who worked in Iraq and Syria with the Russian army’s press office. In 2018, frustrated with the lack of quality analysis on the Middle East, he launched Rybar, which began as an independent project with his “mentor and teacher,” computer programmer Denis Shchukin.
They developed it with the help and funding of Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin, whose Internet Research Agency was identified as the “troll factory” in the U.S. investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Zvinchuk says he worked for Prigozhin’s outlet as a columnist before leaving in 2022 to focus on Rybar full time.
Zvinchuk was put on a European Union sanctions list in 2023 following his participation in a working group established by Putin to coordinate Russia’s military conscription drive, as well as his role distributing disinformation and propaganda about the war.
Now Rybar is expanding outside Russia. Zvinchuk’s initial team of eight has grown to 60 and features analysis of other international conflicts. “We know the war in Ukraine will end, and we need to be fully prepared to cover other hot spots,” he said.
This year, Zvinchuk set up media training schools in Serbia, Bosnia and Kyrgyzstan, and he recently led a session at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), a prestigious university that trains Moscow’s economic and diplomatic elite.
“I teach my students that there is no simple principle of objective information,” he said. “Anyone who claims to have an objective media outlet or blog is a liar.”
Zvinchuk relies on his network of sources from his 14 years in the military, as well as hack-leaks and informers inside Ukraine. Rybar has also received funding from Rostec, a state defense conglomerate, as well as private Russian companies.
Against a backdrop of slavishly positive state media coverage of the war, Rybar stands out with high-quality analysis and more objective assessments of the situation that are often cited by international analysts and foreign news media (including The Post).
The military bloggers have also been among the most critical of how Russia’s Defense Ministry is conducting the war, and Rybar previously appeared on a list of Telegram channels under investigation for possible illegal “discrediting” of the army.
‘WE ARE PATRIOTS WHO LOVE OUR COUNTRY’
“When something bad happens, we speak out about it so that it doesn’t happen again,” said Zvinchuk. “We are patriots who love our country, but we are aware of the problems, and we talk about them even at inconvenient times.”
Openly pro-Russian, Zvinchuk acknowledged that there are limits, however. He said Rybar would not talk about certain things that would be harmful to the country, such as calling for a change in power or focusing on internal divisions.
“I have common sense. Certain things are just not worth saying,” he said. “When you volunteer to guard your state’s information borders, you understand … what you should and should not talk about.”
The State Department alleges that Rybar manages social media channels #HOLDTHELINE and #STANDWTHTEXAS “to promote Russian government political interests in the United States.” It claims that Rybar also created the TEXASvsUSA channel on X, which focused on the issue of undocumented immigrants and “sought to sow discord, promote social division … and encourage hate and violence in the United States.”
And in a recent report, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center identified Rybar as part of a Russian effort to interfere with the election by creating “eye-catching visuals,” fake investigations and AI to spread “the illusion of a grassroots, crowdfunded organization obscuring connections to the Russian government.”
Asked if he believes it is possible to effectively manipulate voters, Zvinchuk responded that, unlike in George Orwell’s “1984,” a novel whose characters are denied access to information and are ignorant, now “because of the abundance of low-quality information, people are becoming dumber.”
“In principle, it is possible to manipulate people easily,” he said, adding that conspiracy theories have made it possible “to manipulate large masses.” That, he said, is “because a person, when under the deepest stress, is ready to believe absolutely any nonsense.”