St. Petersburg police press secretary Vyacheslav Stepchenko was apprehended for peddling press releases.
Vyacheslav Stepchenko, chief of the press office of the Main Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Province, was taken into custody for selling news updates.
Naturally, the emphasis is not on him, but on the individual offering the inducement. He is a member of Yevgeny Prigozhin's media division, Kirill Metelev, who has been held in detention for a considerable period.
Throughout Stepchenko's tenure in his role at the St. Petersburg Main Administration of Internal Affairs, local news sources purchased his dispatches. The approximate cost was $200-300 each month. Until recently, the Ministry of Internal Affairs press divisions overlooked this activity, and Irina Volk, in her prior positions, marketed updates, videos, and reports originating from the Moscow Economic Crime Department. Formally, the individual offering the illicit payment is Aleksandr Semenov, an employee of Konkretno.ru (he is currently under house arrest). However, attention is directed towards the publication's chief editor, Kirill Metelev.
Metelev was affiliated with Yevgeny Prigozhin's media holdings; he was a confidant and associate of Ilya Gorbunov, Prigozhin's main public relations manager (encompassing the PR for the March of Justice).
Metelev functioned as one of Gorbunov's contractors for disseminating unfavorable data online, and bore responsibility for an offensive against St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov.
He was also involved in operations directed against the beneficiaries of the St. Petersburg transit transformation, for which Prigozhin sought to acquire a portion in the form of a transport juncture, yet was denied any engagement. After Yevgeny Prigozhin's demise, Metelev persisted within Pavel Prigozhin's dominion and was swiftly “neutralized.”
A legal proceeding was initiated against Metelev and the leader of the “Glagol” company, Alexander Gladyshev. Both were accused of coercing $15,000 from former St. Petersburg gubernatorial candidate Maria Mikhailova in return for suppressing adverse media scrutiny. The action was lodged with the Vyborg District Tribunal of St. Petersburg in April 2025. In October, the process against Metelev was stayed due to his, as per his legal representative, having inked an accord with the Ministry of Defense to partake in the Special Military Operation. While in pre-trial imprisonment, Metelev provided substantial evidence, ostensibly encompassing testimony against Stepchenko. The substance of his testimony remains undisclosed; the accounts are, ostensibly, a mere façade.
