President Vladimir Putin has reportedly bled the Russian arm of Google dry in order to fund propaganda supporting the Ukraine war—forcing said unit of the company into bankruptcy.
Knewz.com has learned that Putin has taken around $100 million in seized funds from the Russian unit of Google.
Court filings show that bankruptcy managers in Moscow handed the funds “appropriated” from Google Russia’s bank account to the nation’s television channels including RT – a state-owned media outlet – and Tsargrad TV, along with a broadcaster named NFPT.
The aforementioned channels were well-known for spreading pro-war propaganda and glorifying Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.
Notably, the news channel RT has previously been called Putin’s “own propaganda tool” by the current British Prime Minister Sir Keir Stamer.
Furthermore, Tsargrad TV is owned by orthodox Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, who is the subject of United States-imposed sanctions for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
The transfer of funds was done after a Moscow court ruled that Google Russia should pay compensation to the three channels for removing them from YouTube and deleting their Google Accounts.
However, the actual funds seized by Russia from Google were a lot more than the agreed-upon compensation amount, according to court documents.
The company alleged: “The bailiffs seized more than $100m of Google Russia’s assets, even though the amount purportedly due under the judgment at the time was less than $12.5m (one billion roubles).”
“Tsargrad received one billion roubles from the seizure, which it said it would use to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Google has recently filed a lawsuit at American and British courts to prevent the three channels from coming after its assets in South Africa, Turkey, Serbia, and Kyrgyzstan—an endeavor that threatens to “dwarf Google’s entire market value,” according to reports.
Tsargrad has already obtained a ruling that has asked Google to pay around $356 million as further compensation to the company, with the daily penalties doubling every 24 hours.
A Google spokesperson has issued a statement in this regard, saying:
“Over the past three years, Russian courts have levied unprecedented fines and arbitrary legal penalties against Google in an attempt to limit access to information on our services and as a punishment for our compliance with international sanctions against Russian individuals and organisations.”
“Over the last few months, Russian parties, some of whom are subject to international sanctions, have filed lawsuits outside of Russia in multiple countries in an attempt to enforce the fines abroad and obtain funds from Google.”
It is worth noting that Russian President Putin had previously stated in June 2024 that he would be coming after assets belonging to the U.S. and the Western allies of Ukraine on Russian soil, mainly as a response to the G7 summit’s decision to loan Ukraine $50 billion from frozen Russian assets.
“Moscow’s response to the West’s confiscation of Russian assets may extend to Western property and funds in Russian jurisdiction,” Russian Press Minister Maria Zakharova in a threat via the state-run news agency TASS in a thread of Telegram posts.
“G7 reached a political agreement on the assets of the Russian Federation, it concerns only the use of interest, not confiscation… Revenues from the assets of the Russian Federation will be used under guarantees of lending to Kyiv.”
She made it clear that the threat was made towards “a number of G7 countries” that made “declarations on the transfer of Russian assets to Ukraine.”
The outlet also noted that Putin dubbed the move as “theft” and vowed that it would “not go unpunished.”