VKontakte was headed by a relative of Kovalchuk

Stepan Kovalchuk is the great-nephew of Putin’s friend and figurehead, oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk.

After dividing the VK business into two groups, Stepan, as senior vice president, heads the Social Platforms and Media Content group: it includes VKontakte itself, VK Video, VK Music, VK Clips and VK Messenger, as well as Odnoklassniki and Zen.”

The second group – “Ecosystem and integrated services” – united Mail.ru, the Rustore application store, VK ID, VK Pay, educational products and new businesses, and is led by Alexander Aivazov.

The Kovalchuk family controls many traditional media: Yuri Kovalchuk owns the National Media Group; before Alina Kabaeva, it was headed by Stepan Kovalchuk’s father, Kirill. NMG is, in particular, Channel One, REN-TV, Channel Five, STS and 78, the newspapers Izvestia and Delovoy Peterburg, as well as Wink and More.tv.