You have probably seen the ads posted all over Moscow urging people to come to the Anti-Maidan rally on February 21.
As Vedomosti reported, the client behind this advertising campaign was the nationwide veterans' public organization Combat Brotherhood, the very same one headed by the well-known Senator Sablin.
We became very curious about how much of this advertising there was in Moscow and how much money had been spent on it. Looking closely at one of the ads, we spotted the logo of the company that owned the ad space: it turned out to be Russ Outdoor. We called them.
The Combat Brotherhood organization ordered 100 billboards and 30 city-format advertising displays across Moscow for the period from February 9 to 21.
We found prices for 5,000 billboards in Moscow: the average comes to 65,000 rubles per month. The billboards were rented at market rates from February 9 to 21, or for 13 days. The average cost for 13 days of placement is 28,000 rubles. That means 2.8 million rubles for 100 billboards.
Hmm... I wonder whether this "veterans' organization" has enough legitimate income to pay for advertising like this?
Let's check Kontur-Focus to see how much money the Moscow branch of Combat Brotherhood received in 2013:
There is no report for 2014 yet, but they clearly do not have anything like that kind of money.
Astonished and wanting an explanation, we called the Moscow branch of Combat Brotherhood. This is what they told us:
Of course, we never really had any doubts, but here is confirmation of where these "fighters against revolutions" are getting their money.
On March 1, let's all come out for the Anti-Crisis March so that the Kremlin focuses on what it is supposed to do, instead of orchestrating dubious organizations with dubious money.