From Berlin to Abu Dhabi: The Secret Rebranding of a Russian State Media Agency
Investigators: Luise Boenke, Ondrej Teply, Christian Mamo, M.K
Authors: Christian Mamo, Ondrej Teply
Editor: Orlaith Delaney
For over a decade, the Global South has drawn growing international attention, thanks to its rising political and economic clout. So, when a new media project suddenly emerges—fully staffed with 150 people and proclaiming itself “THE video agency of the Global South”—it inevitably sparks curiosity. That’s the story of Viory, a video agency that made a high-profile debut at the Abu Dhabi Global Media Conference in 2023. Despite its polished façade, questions quickly began to emerge. Beneath the sleek exterior, traces of a familiar structure began to surface - pointing not to an independent new player, but to the well-established, formerly Berlin-based agency Ruptly, part of the well-known Russian state media network RT.
When hearing the term ‘Russian state media’, one instantly thinks of the outlets spewing polemical, jingoistic, openly biased and dubious narratives. However, despite openly being a subsidiary of the Simonyan-run RT group, Ruptly always operated differently. For starters, it was a news agency primarily dealing in footage. From its headquarters in Berlin, Ruptly ran its global network of freelance video journalists - who would be contracted to film a wide range of events throughout the world. The footage was uploaded to Ruptly’s website and sold to news agencies around the world. Its clients included major outlets such as the BBC, the Daily Mail, and Al Jazeera.
Even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ruptly had attracted the attention of Germany’s Bild investigative team, which unveiled Katerina Mavrenkova as chief content officer of Ruptly. In the expose, Mavrenkova was shown requesting a Berlin-based journalist to “penetrate into Charité” - a hospital where at the time late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was being treated following his poisoning Effectively, Mavrenkova, an employee of the Russian state, was asking the journalist to do espionage on the prominent critic of the Russian state.
2021 Bild article about Mavrenkova. Headline reads “I was supposed to spy on Navalny!” Pictures include a screenshot of text messages from Mavrenkova to the journalist, and a photo of Mavrenkova standing with Sergey Lavrov.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine precipitated a flood of staff resignations from Ruptly’s Berlin headquarters and intensified the spotlight on the agency - this time from the German state as well as the media, necessitating a change in location. However, in the interim period, they appeared to have found a temporary solution: Lensum: a small, off-the-shelf media company, under which they operated over the summer of 2023.
First Rebranding
An August 2023 article by Tagesspiegel, citing an insider, identified Lensum as being a shell company for Ruptly’s continued operations. OFU research shows that Lensum, initially known as Tocha, was founded by the company ELA Verwaltungs GMBH. Looking at the latter company, it appears to be a firm offering the service of registering ‘ready-to-go' firms - or so-called shelf companies - for clients wanting to immediately go into business without going through lengthy bureaucratic procedures.
After Tocha was renamed as Lensum, public registry documents show a certain Marina Sevciuc was listed as owner. With what appears to be a Ukrainian-Moldovan name, Sevciuc has virtually zero online presence - likely a placeholder owner. (Lightning rod?) Additionally, Lensum is owned entirely by Yerevan-based Roxxon - a company with minimal online presence, registered under the ownership of a Nairi Simonyan.
Responding to Tagesspiegel’s inquiries, ‘Lensum denied any connections to Ruptly, or the Russian state. Yet, Tagesspiegel reporters showed that Lensum had hired a head of human resources whose LinkedIn page showed work experience at RT Germany.
However Lensum appears to have been a transitionary phase, in preparation for the final stage of Ruptly’s rebranding - becoming Viory, “the video news agency of the global south”. Viory introduced itself at the Abu Dhabi “Global Media Congress’ of 2023. Taking a look at open-source evidence, particularly from social media, our research shows that several senior figures at the defunct Ruptly continued to be seen associated with Viory and Viory-related events.
Viory is Ruptly’ — this simple revelation was first made public by Felix Huesmann in his article for RND in November last year. He later followed up with another piece for RND, with help from OSINT for Ukraine. Our investigative team had already been tracking the activities of the ‘newly’ founded video agency for some time. As such, we are now in a position to provide our readers not only with compelling new evidence that Viory is indeed Ruptly, but also with a closer look at the recent shifts in Russian propaganda — and what these reveal about the Kremlin’s evolving strategies and objectives.
The People
At the heart of our investigation stand the people behind Viory — not only the visible figures, but also those operating behind the scenes. Having spent countless hours poring through LinkedIn, and with the help of facial recognition software, we were able to identify dozens of former Ruptly employees now working for Viory. Our team has chosen to highlight six of the most prominent names. Each of them tells a slightly different story — a different shade within the complex network that is Viory.
Katerina Mavrenkova
The former chief of content of Ruptly’s Berlin office. accused of forcing one of her employees to spy on Navalny. She maintains a very low online presence, particularly after the full-scale invasion, which is unusual for a somewhat senior executive at an international media agency. However, from late 2023, Mavrenkova began making a series of public appearances.
Mavrenkova is one of the hidden figures behind Viory. As our investigation progressed, it became clear that she does not publicly acknowledge any connection to the agency. None of the evidence linking her to Viory comes directly from her or through any official online presence — a gap that, in our view, appears deliberate. Yet the facts remain undeniable.
Mavrenkova signed an agreement on behalf of Viory in Riyadh (pictured below) with the Union of News Agencies (UNA) of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In the same week, this was followed by the official launch of the agency in the neighboring United Arab Emirates. The apparent undesirability of being publicly connected to Viory so shortly before its launch is illustrated by a telling detail in the trade magazine Broadcast Pro Middle East — where Mavrenkova was simply cropped out of a photo.
Mavrenkova with Mohammed bin Abd Rabo Al-Yami, Director General of UNA. A cropped picture without Mavrenkova (above) was published by trade magazine Broadcast Pro Middle East.
This context makes the next piece of evidence all the more striking, as it seems like an oversight or a rare slip in an otherwise tightly controlled media embargo. The evidence comes to light through the Kazan Forum. This is a significant yearly conference between the Russian government and the OIC, and is an important platform for relations between Russia and majority-Muslim countries.
In the 2024 edition, Kazan Forum listed Mavrenkova as a panelist, tagging her on the official conference website as “Director of Content of the international media agency Viory.” Our team also identified numerous individuals at the conference with direct ties to Ruptly or RT who later joined Viory’s ranks. That year's Kazan Forum seems to be also crucial for polishing the details before Viory's official entry into the UAE’s media ecosystem.
For someone who has no official ties to the company, Mavrenkova seems to be present at several every pivotal moments for Viory. Coincidence?
Dinara Toktosunova
Named by German publications Tagesspiegel and RND as the CEO of the now-defunct Ruptly. Similarly to Mavrenkova, Toktosunova has very little online presence. And another similarity with Mavrenkova: Toktosunova also appeared as a panelist at the Kazan Forum in at least 2023. Then, Viory had not yet been established and Toktosunova is described as “director of Ruptly”.
Screenshot taken from Ruptly’s old website
An interesting anomaly comes up when one Googles “Динара Токтосунова Viory” - a link appears to the 15th edition of the Kazan Forum (taking place in 2024, where Mavrenkova spoke as a panelist) on the conference’s official site. The text visible in the Google search describes Toktosunova as “director of international media agency Viory.” This may however be a mistake on the part of the website - none of the panels described in the 2024 Kazan Forum appear to involve Toktosunova at all.
This is the only piece of evidence linking her to Viory.
Dmitry ‘Mitja’ Keshishev
Keshishev is another former Berlin-based senior employee of Ruptly, working in Digital Product Management. According to his LinkedIn page, the Russian worked for Ruptly in this capacity until 2022, and since 2023 has been self-employed as a “digital transformation and brand communication executive”.
According to his Behance profile, Keshishev was a part of a team that in 2024 created the entirety of Viory’s visual language, which means he was working for the agency even before the official launch. We were unable to what extent he was aware that the company with which he collaborated on the ‘facelift’ is in reality his old employer. However, it is another piece of evidence linking former Ruptly employees, particularly ones in key positions, with Viory.
Matt Tabacos
Described in a 2018 interview as Chief Commercial Officer of Ruptly. Tabacos resurfaces in a 2024 photo posted on the official Viory LinkedIn account, in a meeting with representatives of the Saudi Press Agency. On the picture’s caption, Tabaccos is described as a part of the Viory team. Next to him stands a friendly looking, smiling middle-aged women whose confident posture attracts attention. She has been identified by our team as Anna Belikova.
(Left to right) Matt Tabacos, Anna Belikova
Anna Belikova
Belikova is a senior figure with RT’s Arabic service and “adviser to Strategic Vision Group ‘Russia-Islamic World’”, as well as a lecturer at several prestigious Russian universities. Belikova has also been a moderator in numerous editions of the Kazan Forum, including in the same panel in 2024 where Katerina Mavrenkova participated as a speaker.
Although Belikova’s affiliation with Viory remains unclear, she has been repeatedly seen alongside the aforementioned figures. Her frequent presence at key events and negotiations suggests that she enjoys a great deal of trust - trust that clearly signals her proximity to the core of Putin’s regime.
Eyad Al Hussein
Al Hussein has worked for Ruptly in Berlin – which has apparently been listed on his Linkedin profile as “International Video News Agency” since at least 2019.
Prior to this, he was known in Syria as a propagandist for the Assad regime. Publicly available photos show him posing with the infamous Suheil al-Hasan, one of Assad’s most trusted officers, and commander of the Tiger Forces, an Alawite paramilitary force linked to countless atrocities against Syrian civilians, possibly including the Douma chemical attack.
According to Syrian activist Tamer Turkmane, founder of the Syrian Revolution Archive, Eyad Al Hussein posted images of himself stepping on corpses of slain rebel fighters; wrote multiple sectarian, inflammatory posts against Syrian Sunni civilians; and praised government air and artillery strikes on populated areas.
Al Hussein is currently openly affiliated with Viory, even appearing in promotional videos about the agency’s Arabic language service.
Eyad al Hussein (r) with Suheil al Hassan
Content
A look at the content on the Viory site also suggests much about the agency’s affiliation. As mentioned earlier, though the headlines and scripts are not overtly propagandistic, a closer examination reveals the stance of the agency. Most flagrant is the complete refusal to refer to the war in Ukraine as a “war” - mirroring the Russian state’s official line. Instead, videos from the war are tagged with “Donbass conflict” or “Russia-Ukraine conflict”.
Videos about Ukraine also exclusively use the non-official transliteration for Ukrainian city names, instead using the old, Russified spellings. Going against the official stance of the vast majority of the world’s states, Viory also appears to recognize Russian annexations of Ukrainian land - Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions are referred to as “DPR” and “LPR”, respectively.
Curiously older, pre-invasion footage on the Viory site (when it was still known as Ruptly) tag videos from Donetsk - occupied by Russia-backed separatists since 2014 - as coming from Ukraine. Mentions of “DPR” were then also preceded by “self-proclaimed”. However, this was also in line with the Russian state’s narrative of the time.
Particularly illuminating is the series of Viory exclusives. A recent one, inconspicuously titled ‘Might of Moscow’, shows drone footage of Russian military equipment preparing to go on the parade on May 9, 2025. Particularly given the prevalence of small armed drones in the war in Ukraine, one can imagine it takes a high level of security clearance and trust to film such footage. There are at least 352 videos under the “80th Victory Day Anniversary” tag currently up on the Viory site, including at least two other exclusives.
Further exclusives suggest Viory having high levels of access to Russian high-level officials. There are two exclusives from the most recent negotiations in Turkey, as well a whopping six exclusives from Putin’s June 2024 visit to North Korea. Plainly, few international news agencies even have the capability to film in North Korea. One can only wonder how an apparently six-month-old Viory managed to pull this off.
Then the matter of the coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. While the over-the-top Russian conspiracy theories and narratives about Ukraine are not present—NATO generals, bioweapon mosquitos, Bucha denialism—do not feature, the content still clearly shows a significant bias in the favour of Russia. One exclusive shows a resident of Avdiivka celebrating the town coming under Russian control. There are also multiple exclusives from Wagner depicting the mercenary group’s training and combat activities. Again, atypical for an ostensibly neutral media agency.
Finally, Viory hosts an enormous amount of Ruptly’s old content. Though Viory claims to have bought an archive of footage before launching, all of this footage seems to come from Ruptly. For example, ‘Anna F’ is a former output editor at Ruptly, according to her LinkedIn profile. On her Behance account, one finds several screenshots from Ruptly’s YouTube account dated to 2018. Five out of six videos can be found on the Viory site with the exact same headlines and scripts.
Analysis
The transformation of Ruptly into Viory can also reveal several insights regarding Russia’s international outreach strategy. Following the diplomatic fallout caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine—where Russian official institutions were isolated from the western world, with Russian state-affiliated news agencies subjected to an EU-wide ban—Russian international outreach has been branching out, searching for new partners.
To this end, Africa, or the ‘Global South’ in general, appears to be a major target. This is seen in Viory’s tagline - “the video news agency of the Global South”. This reflects Russia’s endeavours to promote itself as an alternative to western hegemony. With faith in institutional media at all-time lows, and the proliferation of Internet access opening new avenues for information warfare, the ‘Global South’ is fertile ground to propagate pro-Russian narratives.
This is particularly pertinent now. Large swathes of the world’s perspectives are arguably underrepresented in the mainstream media powerhouses’ broadcasting. Some geopolitical flashpoints— such as the Israeli offensive on Gaza, where widespread international law violations have been described by international bodies as amounting to genocide —reveal deep fissures between the perspectives of established media and those of the public, particularly in the ‘Global South’. As such, Russian state media has a major opportunity to exploit this chasm in opinion.
This is seen in the substantial amount of coverage pro-Palestinian protests in the west get on Viory and other Russian state-affiliated media agencies, as well as the growing amount of young folk who primarily get their news from social media, which is vulnerable to manipulation. Unfortunately, this also opens the door for some actors to dismiss such sentiment as being a result of Russian propaganda. This fuels the political polarization observed across much of the continent.
In Africa in particular, Russia has been expanding its presence over the last decade, with Wagner mercenaries deployed to several Russia-aligned states and taking control of certain resources. In this, Russia’s state media apparatus can play a supporting role. Russian-linked disinformation campaigns have already been reported on in Africa, some revolving around leaders of Russian-aligned states, like Ibrahim Traore, who appears in dozens of videos on the Viory site.
One of the most public faces of Viory is Alex Kobia. An experienced Kenyan media executive, Kobia has had a career working with prestigious international news agencies like Al Jazeera. As the “Africa representative” of Viory, Kobia may be an important figure in the Russian state’s messaging efforts on the continent.
The content on Viory itself also reveals a growing versatility and adaptability on the part of Russian state media. The headlines and scripts are neither polemical nor inflammatory, as one may expect from Russian state media. Most of the content has nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine. However, as shown in our content analysis, the fundamental narratives are the same, whether from more “vulgar” Russian state media agencies, like Sputnik or RT, or ones with a veneer of objectivity like Viory. As such, Viory can position itself as a “respectable” alternative to the cruder propaganda, while maintaining the same overarching narratives.
Viory’s headquartering in Abu Dhabi also sheds light on the interplay between the Russian and Emirati states. The UAE appears to increasingly be a destination for Russian institutions now unwelcome in the western world. Recall the scandal around Tenet Media, where a right-wing American media platform was found to be taking payments from Russian-affiliated companies.
Two of these companies were based in the UAE, according to court documents. One, Sonorous Technologies, according to Russian opposition publication Novaya Gazeta, has links to Denis Khudiev, a former Ukrainian politician with ties to the now-defunct pro-Russian Party of Regions. Sputnik, another Russian state media agency, was also revealed to have links with the UAE, with company records showing that its broadcasting rights were paid for by Dubai-based firm Monolink Group FZCO, which, according to Novaya Gazeta, has “circuitous” links to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
As such, there appears to be very strong evidence linking Ruptly to Viory. That there is no mention – neither on the site nor by any of Viory’s representatives - of any ties whatsoever with the Russian state raises strong questions regarding the integrity of the media agency and can be seen as an insidious attempt to propagate pro-Russian narratives under a veneer of objectivity. This may reflect an increasingly decentralized and diffuse Russian state approach to international messaging, as well as surprising prudence from the likes of RT boss Margarita Simonyan.
Though Viory evidently did a pitiful job of covering its tracks and its connection to Ruptly, the content on its site continues to demonstrate a solid level of quality and reach, albeit with an evidently smaller scale of operations than before. Lacking the overly incredulous or inflammatory rhetoric of “traditional” Russian state media, Viory can come to play an important role in the Russian propaganda ecosystem
