Leaked documents show the supposedly self-reliant anti-Kremlin outlet Mediazona asked the UK gov’t for £300,000. With foreign funding drying up, the “independent” news site now faces financial crisis.
Mediazona, the self-styled “independent” Russian outlet which partners with the BBC to track the deaths of Russian troops, requested hundreds of thousands of pounds directly from the British government, according to a tranche of leaked official documents.
Having mainly targeted Russians since its founding in 2014 by members of the Western-backed troupe of provocateurs known as Pussy Riot, Mediazona has largely remained off the radar of news consumers in the West. But that changed with the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine. Since the first day of the conflict, Mediazona has collaborated with the BBC Russian Service on a project tracking the deaths of Russian servicemen through open source methods. Mediazona describes “the work [as] meticulous and time-consuming,” requiring “relentless efforts of journalists.”
Who or what was footing the bill was left unmentioned in the description of the initiative, which was clearly designed to foment dissent and opposition to the proxy war among Russian citizens. Now, leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone indicate that between 2020 and 2023, Mediazona was in line for vast, secret grants for anti-Kremlin agitation from the British Foreign Office, under the official auspices of London’s opaque “Global Britain Fund.”
Hellbound and Down 