Ramzan Kadyrov Off Instagram, Creates Account on Mylistory

Article by Ivan Golunov

“Ramzan Kadyrov left Instagram for a new Chechen social media network. Who’s behind the site, and how is it tied to Kadyrov himself?”

In late 2017, Internet users discovered that Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to Chechen government head Ramzan Kadyrov had been blocked. That same day, Kadyrov announced that he had created an account on a new social network called Mylistory. It was first listed in app stores in August of 2017, and most of its content is related to Chechnya. Ivan Golunov and Alexander Gorbachov investigated ties between Mylistory’s developers and Kadyrov himself and found a link to a private military training center where Chechen soldiers prepared for deployment to Syria.

“There is also good news,” the President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said on December 23 in his telegram channel, telling that his instagram page was deleted . “I learned that in Chechnya, a new social network Mylistory is being tested, which is not inferior to overseas in anything.”

Despite Kadyrov’s words, the Mylistory application is already available for download in both the App Store and Google Play. The social network is very similar to instagram before changing the design and launching “Stories”: you can upload photos here, apply different filters to them, comment on them and add them to your friends feed. When you try to find someone who uses the social network, the application first of all suggests adding Kadyrov and Magomed “Lord” Daudov, who is considered to be his closest ally. The publication of TJournal indicated that Mylistory has a lot of advertising, for example, stickers on cars or covers for smartphones. The user agreement says that the application is intended for people over 13 years old.

Developed the application Magomed Eskhanov – director of the advertising agency “Maili”, registered in early 2017 and located in one of the skyscrapers of the business center “Grozny City”. Holding “Grozny City” just owns the agency “Miley”. In addition, the holding owns several assets that were previously owned by the Akhmat Kadyrov Public Fund. Until 2015, he financed major projects initiated by the leadership of the republic. After several publications about the fund, from which, in particular, it turned out that the fund actively establishes commercial companies, and Chechen state employees donate donations to it voluntarily-forcibly, part of its property was transferred to other owners. For example, the company “Leader of Auto”, which sells AvtoVAZ, Hyundai and Toyota cars in Chechnya, transferred from the fund’s assets to the ownership of Grozny-City.