Informational aggression is not always, actually, about aggression. Usually, this is the weaving of narratives and messages needed by the enemy into the usual information canvas for Ukrainians.
Mass media have long since turned from news providers to weapons. The opportunities that mass media have – to change public opinion, to form loyalty or to sow enmity – have long been used by both business and the political establishment.
Russia has achieved serious success in this field and today feeds the whole world with fakes. Informational attacks, manipulations, and propaganda produced by the army of Russian bots began to fall on Ukrainians long before the war. And due to the fact that our state did not timely assess the role of information weapons, today we are forced to pay a high price for this miscalculation.
In recent years, Ukraine began to actively fight against the spread of Russian propaganda in the mass media. In 2016, the broadcasting of Russian channels and radio was blocked on the territory of our country, and internet access to Russian websites and social networks that replicate Kremlin propaganda was also limited. More than 450 companies and 1,200 individuals were sanctioned at that time. Last year, blocking sanctions were imposed against a number of media outlets that spoke from Ukraine but disseminated Kremlin propaganda narratives. Licenses were lost, so-called channels of Medvedchuk and others. In a separate proceeding under the article “fraud”, more than 400 sites were blocked – “cesspools”, which specialized in fakes and posted any disinformation on their sites for money.
Also, the state has finally started to fight fakes in social networks, blocking groups and pages of misinformers. Since last year, the requirements for the mass media to disclose information about the ownership structure and ultimate beneficiaries have increased, which should also contribute to the detection of anti-Ukrainian information resources and the cessation of their activities on the territory of the state. In order to protect the national interests of Ukraine in the information space, the Center for countering disinformation was created at the NSDC, whose activities, however, can hardly be called effective.
But the information war is too complicated to be won by a single law or signature. Nowadays, even detecting all fake and propaganda resources is not so easy. First, there are a lot of them. Second, they usually work under the guise of “correct” and current names. Like, say, “Antikor”, using the example of which we will find out today how Russian propaganda works.
Despite the fact that this resource positions itself as a “national anti-corruption portal”, it is a platform for placing ordered materials, inexpensive and omnivorous. Any content can be posted there for a small fee. Even if it is a Russian fake or outright anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
In 2018, the “Texts” resource, with the support of the “Renaissance” Foundation, conducted a study, according to which “Antikor” was included in the TOP-10 Ukrainian sites specializing in the distribution of fakes.
Who is behind “Antikor”?
On the antikor.com.ua website, only the e-mail address and the Kyiv address – Romain Rollana Boulevard, 7, are listed as contact information. This is a non-residential building on Borshchagivka, which houses many different companies. There is no official information about the owners of the site. And this, by the way, is one of the reasons why the heroes of fake publications cannot defend themselves through the courts. In numerous court cases in which “Antikor” appears, it is very often noted that it is impossible to establish the owner of the site.
The applicant refers to the answers of the Association of Enterprises “Ukrainian Network Information Center” and the Center of Competence of the Ukrainian National Center for Information and Communication Technology (“Ukrainian Center for Support of Numbers and Addresses”) that neither the Association nor the Center can provide information about the owner of the website, because are not the owners of such information. This is because the information provided by the Center about the owner of the “Antikor” website is nothing more than an assumption obtained from the “WHOIS Server”, which is not responsible for the reliability and relevance of the information provided by the service. This is a literal quote from one of the court cases.
Also, there is no information about the editor-in-chief on the site, and it is impossible to find the number of EDRPOU associated with this site in the registers. However, it is known that the owner of the trademark “Antikor” is two individuals – a natural person Kostyantyn Evgenovich Chernenko, registered at the address: Pryluky, Chernihiv region, str. Bosobroda, 87, apartment 31. And the legal entity is “Teka Group Foundation”, registered in the Republic of Panama and founded, in turn, by the Belizean offshore Hamilton Management Ltd. And Ihor Viktorovych Kondratyuk, Kyiv, st. Yerevanska, 18A, sq. 17. “Teka-Group Foundation” was registered only at the beginning of 2018 and the domain antikor.ua (currently inactive) was immediately registered for it.
Chernenko renounces the rights to the site and positions himself only as the editor-in-chief, that is, as a hired employee or, in general, as an expert of such a “Committee for Combating Corruption in Authorities” – without attachment to the “Antikor” website.
The “Committee for Combating Corruption in Authorities” is also registered in Pryluky, at the address of st. Sadova, 123, sq. 29. According to the Register of Public Associations on the website of the Ministry of Justice, the activity of this NGO has been suspended as of August 2021.
However, this organization is not listed as liquidated on the clarity-project.info website. Moreover, from this resource you can learn that its founders are Kostyantyn Chernenko, Viktor Saiko and Serhiy Khantyl.
The NGOs “Committee for Combating Corruption in Authorities” and “Teka Group Foundation” appear in many lawsuits for the protection of honor and dignity in connection with the publication of false information by Antikor. For example.
“Teka-Group Foundation” is not registered in Ukraine, its registered address is Panama. However, since August 25, 2017, this company has been the registrar of the antikor.com.ua domain.
Site with Russian hosting
The connection of the Antikor domain with Russia is very easy to detect.
As of December 2021, Antikor moved to a dedicated IP of the Russian Variti hosting – 185.203.72.75. According to Website Reports, under the same Google Ads Publisher ID (4336163389795756) together with “Antikor” such Russian information scavengers as Novostiua.org, Glavk.info, Kompromat1.info and Oplatru24.ru work. Back in 2018, the media wrote that “Antikor” actually works from the territory of Russia, and the content of “Antikor” and related resources is available to the Russian reader.
Courts
There are 1,060 documents related to “Antikor” in the Unified Register of Court Decisions. This is not surprising, considering that the site has put the publication of fakes on the stream. Here are some examples that give you an idea of how the site works.
In September 2014, General Director of Ukrspirt State Enterprise Labutin appealed to Antikor. The court rejected one of the applications due to the lack of evidence about the owners of the portal, but in 2015 it ordered Antikor to deny the facts stated in the article. The article was initially deleted, but in 2018 it reappeared on the website.
In December 2017, “Antikor” published two articles at once about the bribery of the medical consulting LLC “Pharmagate”. The company sued the “Teka-Group Foundation” to declare the information untrue and deny it. Two years later, in January 2020, the lawsuit was settled. However, the articles have not yet been removed from the site.
In February 2017, the owner of pharmaceutical companies Kostyantyn Gaevskyi filed a lawsuit against Serhii Khantyl and Kostyantyn Chernenko. The case reached the Supreme Court. However, in March 2020, the decision of the Armed Forces stated that the connection between Khantyl and Chernenko with the site was not established.
In July 2019, Hennadiy Korban started suing Teka-Group Foundation. The reason is similar – the posting of unreliable information. By the way, 573 articles under the tag “Hennadiy Korban” are published on Antikor. Korban later withdrew the claims.
At different times, many famous people and companies in Ukraine tried to sue Antikor. In particular, LLC “ATB”, first deputy head of “Ukravtodor” Roman Kosynskyi, hotel owner Vyacheslav Yutkin, businessman Yevhen Chernyak and others applied to the site. Unfortunately, most of the lawsuits were not satisfied, as it was not possible to contact the owners of the site.
Finally, in December 2021, Yevhen Ogarkov, head of the Garantia law firm and member of the High Council of Justice, filed a lawsuit demanding that the Czech registrar be required to provide information about the registrar. It will be interesting to see how the story ends.
“Antikor” replicates Kremlin “instructions”
Here you can simply cite a few examples that do not require additional comments. The website still has a publication from 2014 with the title “Civil war in Ukraine eats up the rest of the budget”. I am quoting a fragment from this material: “It was the Ukrainian punitive forces that invaded the territory of the southeast, and therefore Kyiv bears the responsibility for any kind of damage, especially since the politicians in Kyiv continue to call themselves the “legitimate government”, and legitimacy is First of all, it’s the turn of responsibility.”
In another article, “Antikor” calls the Revolution of Dignity a “coup d’état” and the participants of the Maidan – “militants who set fire to Berkut.”
Another textbook example of anti-cow journalism: in 2016, “Antikor” published an article with a quote from Russian actor Gosha Kutsenko: “In Ukraine, they wash themselves with the blood of their grandmothers and grandfathers.”
In 2018, “Antikor” spread the thesis of Russian propagandist Solovyov, who compared Ukraine to a jackal and declared that “dead Nazis” live in it.
There are a lot of such quotes, but I don’t want to abuse your attention and spoil your nerves. “Anticor” is a typical Russian resource that works against Ukraine, and therefore the state must react to it. I do not understand why this dump is not yet on the NSDC sanction list and why the SBU ignores this resource.
I hope this information will help law enforcement, security agencies and interested parties bring these individuals to justice.
Source : Сергій Іванов, «Антикор» (antikor.com.ua) : Хто постачає в Україну кремлівські фейки та пропаганду
