Demyan Kudryavtsev

Demyan Borisovich Kudryavtsev (; born 17 December 1971) is a Russian media manager and entrepreneur. Formerly a close associate of Boris Berezovsky, he is a general manager at the Kommersant publishing house, and an owner of the Vedomosti newspaper.

Biography

Demyan Kudryavtsev was born in Leningrad, USSR in 1971. He studied journalism at Leningrad State University and obtained a second degree in philology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after repatriating to Israel in 1990. He acquired Israeli citizenship and finished military service in the country. He launched some business projects in Israel, including an IP telephony startup (Deltathree), but ultimately decided to return to Russia and invest his time in information technologies there.

In 1995, Kudryavtsev became a co-founder and executive of Cityline ISP and the head of its content-focused arm Netskate. In the early times of Runet, he took part in the launch of some popular websites, such as the Anekdot.ru jokes website and The Evening Internet media. In 2001, Cityline was sold to its major rival Golden Telecom and Kudryavtsev received $2.9 million for his share.

Starting in 2007, Kommersant (and specifically the Kommersant-Vlast magazine) came under pressure from the authorities for publications on sensitive political topics. The conflict reached its height during the 2011 Russian legislative election and led to the departure of Kommersant-Vlast chief editor. In 2012, Kudryavtsev also quit the company and was replaced by Dmitry Sergeev, former CEO of UTV Media. According to Meduza, that happened due to pressure from Alexey Gromov, a top Presidential Administration official acting as media curator, who demanded the resignation of a Kommersant top executive. Kudryavtsev received $3 million in compensation for resignation. The deal was signed in May 2015, shortly after the Russian authorities adopted a law effectively banning foreign control of media in Russia. Kudryavtsev also acquired the priority right to purchase the remaining shares of Vedomosti from Pearson (the publisher of Financial Times) and Dow Jones (the publisher of The Wall Street Journal). By the end of 2015, he became the full owner of Vedomosti.

The joint investigation of Forbes, Meduza, The Bell, and Vedomosti found out that the deal was made with the Gazprombank debt, and the rights on that debt were later transferred to the Rosneft-owned Russian Regional Development Bank. The loan was arranged by Kudryavtsev's friend Dmitry Bosov. The investigators questioned if the state-owned Rosneft influenced the managerial decisions of Kudryavtsev. The entrepreneur had denied allegations, pointing out that he never interfered with the editorial politics and that during his ownership of Vedomosti, the newspaper was targeted by several lawsuits from Rosneft, while he personally was stripped out of his Russian citizenship and effectively chased out of the country.

The Moscow Times

After acquiring The Moscow Times, Kudryavtsev invited Yuri Saprykin and Mikhail Fishman to lead the editorial team and relaunched the newspaper as a weekly print publication. Later in 2017, the founder of the newspaper Derk Sauer joined the management team and turned it into an online-only project.

Publishing

During his time in Israel, Kudryavtsev published an Inhabited Island literature magazine and an online magazine EYE. Together with Anton Nosik, they published an unofficial humor supplement for a popular weekly Israeli-Russian newspaper Vremia. Upon returning to Russia, Kudryavtsev published The Internet magazine and Ai literature journal. Kudryavtsev also made a name as a poet, both in Russia and Israel.