Vladimir Putin has bestowed state honors on 51 employees of Russia’s state-run Pervy Kanal (Channel One), the result of a decree dated Sept. 29. Among the honorees are propagandists whose reports The Insider has previously debunked as false.
Correspondent Ivan Blagoy received the Order of Friendship. He authored a widely known 2016 report about “Lisa,” a girl in Germany who was allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted by immigrants. German police later established that she had neither been abducted nor raped.
Kirill Brainin received the Order of Honor. The Insider has also repeatedly debunked his reports, including stories about the Skripal poisoning case and a claim that Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite had cooperated with the KGB.
Putin also awarded the Order of Friendship to Dimitri Simes, host of the program The Great Game. Simes is under sanctions imposed by Canada and Ukraine. He also faces criminal charges in the United States, where the Justice Department alleges that he continued working for Channel One after American sanctions were imposed on the network — receiving more than $1 million, a chauffeured car, and money for housing in Moscow. He is charged with violating sanctions and money laundering.
Also on the list was Yekaterina Berezovskaya, an anchor of the flagship news program Vremya. In March 2022, she presented a group of people who had traveled to Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory as Western journalists who were prepared to “look the truth in the eye.” The Insider later found that the group included a pro-Kremlin activist, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, and a person linked to entities associated with Wagner Group co-founder and “troll farm” operator Yevgeny Prigozhin. Berezovsky is under Ukrainian sanctions.
In all, Putin’s decree granted state awards to 51 Channel One employees:
- Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” 4th Class: Channel One Deputy Director General Tatyana Garanina and host Yury Simonov.
- Order of Honor: commentator Kirill Brainin.
- Order of Friendship: Sergei Andreyev, Ivan Blagoy, Alexei Kaskov, Dmitry Simes, Maxim Sharafutdinov, and Pyotr Shepin.
- Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” 1st Class: Yekaterina Berezovskaya, Roman Budnikov, Konstantin Vavilov, Maria Vasilyeva, Yelena Demidova, Grigory Yemelyanov, Svetlana Zeynalova, Yulia Zimina, Valeria Korablyova, Larisa Krymova, Yelena Lapshina, Olga Masliy, Yekaterina Mtsituridze, Anton Nenashev, Dmitry Orlov, Tatyana Pirogova, Timur Solovyov, Rustam Suleimankhil, Sergei Tugushev, Andrei Ukharev, Yulia Fatyukhina and Olga Chernosvitova.
- Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” 2nd Class: Sergei Arkhipov, Sergei Babayev, Ilya Bulavinov, Anton Volsky, Olga Vorontsova, Alyona Germanova, Roman Gutzeit, Alexander Dudkin, Alexei Zotov, Denis Kazansky, Alexander Kosygin, Olesya Loseva, Irina Muromtseva, Dmitry Popkov, Denis Ratov, Pavel Rudakov, Alexander Smola, Andrei Stolyarov, Valery Shein, and Yelena Shtokolova.
It was the second mass award ceremony for Channel One employees this month. Under a Sept. 3 decree, Putin honored another 28 of the network’s employees, including Deputy Director General Natalya Nikonova, department heads Sergei Sokolov and Svetlana Kolosova, sports commentators Vladimir Gomelsky and Viktor Gusev, host Arina Sharapova, and chief producer of music and entertainment programming Yury Aksyuta.
