Russian media executive Ksenia Sobchak dismisses ‘leaked messages’ that appear to show her dictating her outlet’s coverage: ‘Now it’s ethical to discuss invented screenshots?’
Warning! This article contains profanity.
What are the ‘Sobchak message leaks’? A brief recap
On July 8, the hacker group Black Mirror — which publishes data leaks from the accounts of people tied to the Russian state — and the anonymous VChK-OGPU project posted screenshots of several private conversations. One of the people in them, they said, was the journalist and media executive Ksenia Sobchak.
The hackers released the first batch of the archive on July 8. Among the screenshots, they said, were excerpts from Sobchak’s exchanges with the propagandist Kristina Potupchik; Alexei Nemeryuk, the first deputy chief of staff at Moscow’s City Hall; Sergei Titov, editor-in-chief of the Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti, which is part of Sobchak’s media group; and the businesswoman Polina Deripaska.
Links to the screenshots appeared on Sobchak’s own Telegram channels — “Krovavaya Barynya” and “Sobchak” — with the following comment:
Today friends sent me a link to a private channel run by some hacker group that posted my correspondence there. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my thoughts or my actions. If anyone wants to read it, let them. I’ll even post some of the “fragments” from what the hackers call “exposure episodes.”
The posts came with screenshots of Telegram messages Sobchak had supposedly written, along with several videos of her.
Minutes later, Ostorozhno Novosti, an outlet Sobchak owns, said that the “Sobchak” and “Krovavaya Barynya” channels had been hacked and that the hackers had posted the messages.
Several hours later, Sobchak said she had regained access to the channels. The hackers, she explained, had reached the accounts by breaking into her email. She told the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo that “the correspondence is fabricated.”
The next day, July 9, Black Mirror released another batch: alleged exchanges between Sobchak and Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s former chief of staff; Sergei Novikov, Russia’s chief cultural censor; and Vladimir Tabak, who runs the state-backed propaganda organization ANO Dialog. Sobchak did not comment on that leak.
The hackers, who say they have obtained Sobchak’s correspondence, describe an archive spanning 2015 to 2026 and running to more than 350 gigabytes.
If the screenshots are genuine, they offer a vivid picture of how Sobchak and her media group maneuver under state censorship.
In messages to Titov, for instance, Sobchak dresses him down over Ostorozhno Novosti’s posts about the fuel crisis. Titov counters that the newsroom is already failing to cover the crisis properly and is ignoring news of the roundups of men in Penza, “so as not to make anyone angry.” (Asked for comment by Agentstvo, Titov said that “the company’s position has already been published” and that he had “nothing to add,” a reference to the Ostorozhno Novosti post about the hack.)
Sobchak tried to get informal permission from Novikov, the Kremlin’s censor, to hold a music festival in Onega. He answered: “Ksenia, since I have already been reproached in the past for supposedly signing off on things you were doing, I will answer simply: ‘no’ :).”
Nemeryuk, the first deputy chief of staff, got a different pitch: Sobchak complained that coverage of the city’s fuel crisis was being censored:
We are willing to do anything within the agreements we are able to honor, but we can’t just run fakes in the channel. Let’s meet again and talk it over. We’ve signed papers, we’re holding up our end, and in return we get no exclusives, none of the stories we were promised and spelled out, and we wait three days for an answer.
After Sobchak interviewed the pro-Kremlin blogger and informer Ilya Remeslo — who had abruptly come out against the war — she received a message from Tabak, the head of ANO Dialog: “I want you to live with the feeling that I may not forgive you.” Sobchak replied: “That’s how I live [frowning emoticon].”
Meduza asked Ksenia Sobchak whether the ‘leaked correspondence’ is real. Here’s what she told us.
On the evening of July 11, Meduza special correspondent Elizaveta Antonova reached Sobchak and asked whether the published exchanges were authentic, what she made of the leak, and who, in her view, wanted it and why.
Here is Sobchak’s response, published without changes:
Elizaveta, have you heard of a thing called “journalism”? Well then, here’s my comment, and I ask that you publish it in full.
Your outlet, which calls itself “independent,” decided FIRST, the day before yesterday, to run a story about how someone cooked up screenshots of private messages, and only TODAY (6:26 p.m. Moscow time) to ask me for comment? Seriously? Is that how journalistic standards work now? Fascinating.
Never mind the fake correspondence of [the politicians Ilya] Yashin, [Lyubov] Sobol, and others — I don’t recall your outlet discussing any of that all these years. There used to be a rule, I thought: unverified leaks like these, plainly made in someone’s interests, have no place in serious media. Well, congratulations on your debut. Isn’t this the sort of thing you and [Meduza editor-in-chief Ivan] Kolpakov once called “unethical behavior”? Now it’s ethical to discuss invented screenshots — the very thing the hack was obviously carried out for? Or is this different?
Even your former colleagues are calling me to apologize for “Meduza.” Because publishing an anonymous garbage dump of anonymous screenshots without so much as contacting the victim of the attack is rock bottom.
I very much look forward to seeing you, as the “honest” journalists you are — at a company that has never had a harassment scandal or taken a state grant — publish my comment. Now that you have finally (two days on) asked for it. I also ask you to publish one more screenshot, which I am giving you exclusively, given its public importance:
“Putin” (22:58):
[This is] urgent
Ksenia, post on your channels immediately that Meduza now considers it acceptable to publish anonymous leaks because it’s a matter of public importance. And as for the fact that these fakes can easily be backdated and tied in advance to the corrected publications, thereby “building” an evidentiary base — nobody gives a fuck about that.
(edited 23:00):Vladimir Vladimirovich, why didn’t they publish the leaks on Yashin, but they’re publishing mine?
“Putin” (23:02):Because ”[you don’t get it], this is different.”
I think it is important to publish this, because it matters that people understand the mechanisms of censorship in Russia.
So are the screenshots real or not?
There is no way to answer that definitively. Whether Sobchak and the people she was writing to actually sent these messages can only be judged from circumstantial evidence.
Agentstvo analyzed the screenshots in which, according to the hackers, Sobchak discussed edits to Ostorozhno Novosti posts with Titov — exchanges in which she intervenes in editorial decisions and censors the outlet’s copy. Agentstvo’s journalists matched the edits against the posts and found that the requests from “Sobchak” in the screenshots line up with the changes made.
Here’s what Agentstvo found
On the afternoon of May 6, 2026, Ostorozhno Novosti published a post about a protest by National Bolsheviks in Voronezh against Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator. At 7:32 p.m. Moscow time, the post was edited. Gone were a mention of the state messaging app MAX and a photo of a National Bolshevik placard reading, in large letters, “I was hanged for not downloading the MAX messenger.”
In the hackers’ screenshots, at 7:30 p.m. the same day, “Sobchak” was wrapping up an exchange with “Titov.” She berated Ostorozhno Novosti’s editor-in-chief for running more “fucking awful” news about the state messaging app and said that from that day on she would fine him 50,000 rubles (about $640) for “unapproved” posts about MAX. “I’m fucking sick of explaining that they are our main advertisers!!!!” “Sobchak” wrote.
On July 3, 2026, Ostorozhno Novosti reported that the Second Western District Military Court in Moscow had sentenced the defendants in a case over membership in the far-right group National Socialism/White Power (NS/WP) to prison terms ranging from 6 to 20 years. Two of them had also been charged with plotting to assassinate RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan. The post went up at 3:17 p.m.
When the FSB detained the men in 2023, it said it had foiled two assassination plots — against the propagandist Margarita Simonyan and against Ksenia Sobchak. In its first version, the Ostorozhno Novosti post did not mention Sobchak in reporting the verdict. Seven minutes later, though, Agentstvo found, the post was updated to include the plot against Sobchak, with the caveat that “members of the group initially denied that accusation.” At 11:10 p.m., that line disappeared.
According to the hackers’ screenshots, “Sobchak” asked “Titov” to add the plot against her to the post. The editor-in-chief did not want to. He explained: “This episode was dropped from the charges.” “Sobchak” kept pressing: “Then write that it was dropped, but that it happened and there was testimony. On camera. All the more reason.”
The “exclusive” screenshot Sobchak sent Meduza — the sarcastic message from “Putin” — says that “fakes can, after the fact, easily be tied in advance to corrected publications, thereby ‘constructing’ an evidentiary base.”
That line probably refers to the Agentstvo report, which ran at 8:47 p.m. Moscow time on July 11, and Sobchak sent Meduza her comment at 11:05 p.m. She appears to be hinting that the hackers first studied the edits to the posts and only then faked her correspondence to make it look credible. That explanation is hardly convincing.
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