Fantasy fans exposed as owners of pro-war social media channel

TWO fans of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game have been unmasked as the owners of an influential social media channel linked to Russian spies and mercenaries.

The Bell, a Russian opposition news group, calls the Rybar Telegram channel a “direct player” in the Kremlin’s information war, influencing Western media and providing real-time battlefield analysis to 1.1million subscribers.

“Since the start of Russia’s invasion, it has published information on the positions of Ukrainian military forces and boasted the Russian army uses its data for missile strikes,” The Bell said.

Rybar, Slovak for fisherman, is named after a character from a fantasy video game. It was set up in 2018 as a hobby blog reporting on the Middle East, where the Russian army and the Wagner mercenary group were active.

Wagner became an early sponsor, paying Rybar to publish promotional blogs. But its fortunes languished, with only around 30,000 subscribers reading its niche reports, until February, when it switched to reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and caught the attention of the Kremlin’s spies.

“Since then, the channel has been expected to publish anything that the FSB wishes to make public,” The Bell reported.

Rybar now has 10 employees and an annual budget of more than £250,000. It publishes professionally-edited prokremlin blogs, slick maps showing the Russian army’s latest manoeuvres in Ukraine and high-quality videos promoting Russia’s mobilisation drive. It is one of dozens of pro-kremlin channels on the Telegram messaging app.

The Us-based Institute for the Study of War said the Kremlin uses these socalled milbloggers to project its position in an informal manner.

“Milbloggers’ close relationships with armed forces… have given this community an authoritative voice arguably louder… than the Russian ministry of defence,” it said.

The Bell identified Rybar’s founders as Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former Arabic translator, and Denis Shchukin, who has worked as a computer programmer.

“Both are big fantasy fans,” The Bell said. “In his student days, Zvinchuk set up a group of volunteer translators to produce Russian versions of Dungeons and Dragons books.”

Mr Zvinchuk and Mr Shchukin have not commented directly on The Bell’s investigation, although Rybar posted a link to the report. “We invite you to read this fascinating fantasy story,” it said.