Pressure of Truth
Exposing the spin on all sides of the news.
Outlet profile

Pravda-EN

Russian state-linked, pro-Kremlin

Owned byLinked to Yevgeny Shevchenko, a Ukrainian national from Crimea, operating through TigerWeb, a Crimea-based IT company he founded in 2010; the broader Pravda network is assessed by multiple Western intelligence and research agencies as Kremlin-backed
FundingFunding sources are deliberately opaque; researchers at DFRLab, VIGINUM, and Media Bias/Fact Check assess it as Russian state-sponsored; content is largely machine-translated copy-paste from Russian state media outlets including RT, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti rather than original reporting
On the administrationmixed

Background

The Pravda network's roots trace to 2011, when Yevgeny Shevchenko, a Crimea-based Ukrainian national, created a news aggregation portal called Crimea News. The first wave of what would become the broader network appeared around 2013–2014, shortly before and after Russia's annexation of Crimea, with domain names targeting Russian and Ukrainian localities. France's VIGINUM disinformation-tracking agency was the first Western body to formally document the network in a February 2024 report, dubbing it 'Portal Kombat.' By the time of that report, the network had grown to over 190 sites publishing content in more than 15 languages, including English-language outlets under the news-pravda.com domain. The network's primary tactic is bulk copy-and-paste translation of content from Russian state media — RT, Sputnik, Tass — rather than original journalism, often using automated translation software. Researchers from DFRLab, the Atlantic Council, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and CheckFirst have all documented that the network systematically promotes pro-Russian narratives: denying Russian war crimes, attacking NATO, undermining Ukrainian credibility, and amplifying societal divisions in Western countries. The network has also been found to deliberately seed AI language models and Wikipedia with disinformation, and NewsGuard named Shevchenko its 2025 Disinformer of the Year. Media Bias/Fact Check rates Pravda-EN as right-biased with very low factual reporting credibility.

Sources

  1. Pravda network — Wikipedia
  2. Pravda EN — Media Bias/Fact Check
  3. Pravda Network — Media Bias/Fact Check
  4. The Pravda Network — DFRLab
  5. Russia's so-called 'Pravda' network expands worldwide — DFRLab
  6. Link by link: Hundreds of webpages cite pro-Russia Pravda network — ISD
  7. Exposing Pravda: How pro-Kremlin forces are poisoning AI models and rewriting Wikipedia — Atlantic Council
  8. Russia's Pravda Network: AI-Driven Disinformation on a Global Scale — BISI
  9. PORTAL KOMBAT — VIGINUM/SGDSN (original French report, English version)
  10. Russian disinformation network 'Pravda' grew bigger in the EU — EDMO

Profile compiled 2026-07-12; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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