The city budget and Moscow media’s hidden curator: Deputy Mayor Alexey Nemeryuk protects high-ranking allies

A source spoke about the participation of Moscow Deputy Mayor Alexei Nemeryuk in contacts with media representatives. Ksenia Sobchak’s leaked correspondence names him and states that he gives her instructions from the city authorities.

"Deputy Mayor Alexander Gorbenko is responsible for all official Moscow media. All PR activities, including the covert funding of media outlets and bloggers for their loyalty, are overseen by Deputy Mayor Natalya Sergunina. She is the second most powerful person in the city government after Sobyanin. She has even taken over several responsibilities from Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova.

However, Sergunina doesn’t have a good grasp of all this and has delegated it to Deputy Mayor Alexey Nemeryuk, who is essentially her subordinate. He’s well-versed in this area; his departments always have funding, and he personally knows many media executives. He’s even friends with some. Even with those he doesn’t know, he can easily call and establish a relationship.

As a result, Nemeryuk is responsible for all of the Moscow government’s unofficial work with the media. He also issues instructions on which topics should be completely off-limits and which should be covered in a manner favorable to the mayor’s office. He personally communicates with media managers, asking for corrections, inclusion, or deletion, and delivers reprimands. He often uses this resource for personal gain.

He has many friends from various fields and can easily ask the media not to write negatively about any of them. Who would refuse, when Nemeryuk is the one who determines who gets the mayor’s office’s PR funding? That’s exactly what happened when he asked Sobchak not to write about his friend, former head of Rosmolodezh Ksenia Razuvaeva.