Source: www.rucriminal.info
In 2017, the "guru of Russian political science" Evgeny Minchenko launched the anonymous Telegram channel "Successor", which is secretly engaged in the PR of Minchenko and his structures, as well as
fulfilling orders for the paid discrediting of public figures. Such allegedly political analytics from the resources under his control misleads the gullible audience of "Successor", to whom Minchenko appears as a guru
in analytics, allegedly "close to the Kremlin" and a successful head of the "Russian Association of Public Relations" (RASO),
which does not have a single social network.
Channel description
In 8 years, "Successor" has managed to write about everything: political news, armed and international conflicts, corruption
and other near-political topics. In reality, Minchenko uses these narratives to cover up his commercial activities to discredit various individuals for monetary compensation.
Minchenko worked very actively on the channel, having achieved that
it entered the top 1000 (551 place) authoritative Telegram channels according to the HITS rating.
At the same time, the channel's audience is clearly inflated. The total number of subscribers to "Successor" is about 32,000,
of which just over 17% are involved in views and 2% left reactions over the past week.
In 2024, 32 publications were deleted from the channel (an average of
1-3 per month). About
2-3 publications are deleted from the channel every month.
Among the deleted posts, special attention can be paid to an interesting entry from July 15, 2023 with the phrase "Belousov was offended by you. Don't do that again." Most likely, it was made by the channel administrator in a private message with one of his interlocutors and then abruptly deleted.
The connection of the channel "Successor" with Yevgeny Minchenko
Fact 1: excessive attention to Minchenko on the channel
Almost every message dedicated to Minchenko
on the channel describes him exclusively from the positive side (an extremely positive assessment of his activities as president of the "Russian Association of Public Relations" is given; the report of "Minchenko Consulting" is noted, which allegedly received high marks "both from colleagues in the industry and among the political elites"; a narrative is traced that political decisions in the country are supposedly made based on the reaction to Minchenko's publications).
What is interesting is that Minchenko himself is regularly present as a hero of one of the ratings of "Successor" called "Big Political Exchange", and
with the note "positive dynamics". And is always modestly mentioned between prominent politicians, officials, and representatives of the Russian business community (for example, between the Governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov and the head of the Presidential Administration Anton Vaino; as well as between the President of the Kurchatov Institute Mikhail Kovalchuk and the President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin).
Based on the tone of the published posts, the "Successor" praises the following people the most: Yevgeny Minchenko, Marat Khusnullin, Sergey Kiriyenko, Alexey Dyumin. It is noteworthy that Minchenko is present among the status people and got into this list, having a positive assessment of his work, as well as positive media coverage on the channel as a whole.
Minchenko clearly wants to be at the "top" of the Russian establishment (attracting controlled information resources for this), and also to use his position to extract maximum benefit. True, Sergey Kiriyenko, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Alexey Dyumin and other "tops" are not administrators of anonymous Telegram channels - by what parameters Minchenko ended up in the same cohort with them - this is a very big question.
Full name Evaluation criteria
Efficiency in the position held Stability of apparatus positions General positioning on the channel
Minchenko E.N. + + +
Khusnullin M.Sh. + + +
Kiriyenko S.V. + + +
Dyumin A.G. + + +
Putin V.V. 0 + 0
Mishustin M.M. + 0 +
Matviyenko V.I. 0 - 0
Volodin V.V. 0 0 0
Novak A.V. + + 0
Siluanov A.G. 0 0 0
Nabiullina E.S. - + 0
Shoigu S.K. - 0 -
Azarov D.I. - - -
Melikov S.A. - - -
Kovalchuk M.V. 0 0 0
Slutsky L.E. 0 0 0
Zyuganov G.A. - + 0
Uyba V.V. - - -
Interestingly, other well-known channels of the socio-political segment of Telegram mention the figure of Minchenko
several times less often than "Successor".
Name Minchenko E.N. Khusnullin M.Sh. Kiriyenko S.V. Dyumin A.G. Index
"Successor" 91,639,584,349 0.057
"Kremlin Without a Tower"
40,401,136,173 0.023
"Secrets of the Kremlin" 40,523,389,172 0.036
"May Decree" 8,243,54,17 0.0254
"Ours and Ours" 4,68,72,88 0.0175
Readovka 2,174,167,38 0.0052
Based on these data, the index of Minchenko's mentions on other Telegram channels in relation to Marat Khusnullin, Sergei Kiriyenko and Alexei Dyumin is noticeably lower
than that of "Successor" (the index was calculated by dividing the number of mentions of Yevgeny Minchenko on each of the 6 Telegram channels
for the total number of mentions of Marat Khusnullin, Sergey Kiriyenko and Alexey Dyumin on the same channel).
Knowing all the above information, it is amusing to observe
behind the fact that "Successor" is trying in every possible way to disguise its direct affiliation with Minchenko's structures. For example, in a post from January 9, 2024, the following statement appeared on the channel: "In some places, we do not agree with the model of "Politburo 2.0" by Yevgeny Minchenko, but there is quite a lot that is useful
and rational in it." Another publication of the channel gives the following description of Minchenko's opinion: "We agree with some things,
with some things we do not really agree, but we definitely support what."
Fact 2: Minchenko forgot about “digital hygiene”
In February 2019, the channels “EZh”, “Brief” and “Brief@незигар” published a post with the following content: “Political strategist Minchenko announced Valentina Matviyenko’s retirement in the spring” with a link to a post in the Telegram channel “Successor”,
which contained the following message: “Matviyenko is leaving in the spring. This issue has been resolved. But it is far from certain
that Turchak will be her replacement” and a link to the Telegram channel “Kremlin BezBashennik” is given.
By posting such publications on the channels, Minchenko sought to “promote” himself as a “near-Kremlin” political scientist with access to insider information about personnel changes
in the echelons of power. However, he only disgraced himself: his forecast did not come true,
and he allowed his involvement with the channel “Successor” to become public.
Fact 3: the channel "Successor" is part of the "network" of Telegram channels associated with Minchenko
After digging a little in open sources, we found some very interesting information that back in 2019, political scientist Dmitry Orlov stated on his Facebook page
that the owner of the Telegram channel "Sober Political Scientist" is Minchenko himself. Later, the Telegram channel "EZh" also reported this fact.
According to the head of the Social Communications agency Ilya Paimushkin, the Telegram channel "Sober Political Scientist" is part of the "Minchenko E. pool". By the way, Minchenko is mentioned in "Sober Political Scientist" as many as 352 times. The Telegram channel regularly publishes reposts of channels associated with it. In addition, the content of "Successor" and "Sober Political Scientist" have common narratives. For example, in 2020, they disseminated information
that the governor of the Irkutsk region Igor Kobzev is a protege of the Rotenberg entrepreneurs.
The Telegram channel "Deputy Governor" may also be under Minchenko's influence. At the end of 2022, the Telegram channel "Elections, elections, elections" published information that this resource belongs to Minchenko.
The content of "Deputy Governor" mainly consists of reposts of similar channels specializing in political analysis and political forecasts. Among the channel's reposts are publications from the Telegram channel "Successor". Also,
on "Deputy Governor" and "Successor" common themes of publications can be traced (for example, criticism of the work of the governor of the Orenburg region Denis Pasler, a forecast of the resignation of the former head of the Komi Republic Vladimir Uyba). The channels “Successor”, “Sober Politologist”, “Deputy Governor” and “Politburo 2.0” owned by Minchenko have common narratives, which clearly indicate that the channels belong to the same “network”. Probably, Minchenko promotes and criticizes certain people through these information resources (and clearly not for free). For example, positive publications were posted on the channels regarding Vladislav Davankov.
And mentions of the former head of the Samara region Dmitry Azarov, on the contrary, had a negative information background.
This is how Minchenko uses the Telegram channels under his control for his own PR and misleading the Russian audience, which he “feeds” with pseudo-analytical publications.
Source: www.rucriminal.info
