We registered our own media outlet, *Leviathan*, in November of last year so that we could get accredited for Putin’s press conference and ask him a question about the Chaikas. Of course, we were not allowed to ask the question, but *Leviathan* remained. For about half a year, we used it exclusively for our legal and investigative work—submitting inquiries, statements, and so on. We gave almost no thought to the journalistic side of it: we neither had, nor have, the resources or the intention to build a full-fledged media outlet.
At the same time, it seemed a shame to let something with such a striking name go to waste. So from time to time we got together to figure out how to breathe life into it, and we tried writing articles—but it didn’t really work. For a while, we put *Leviathan* back in the drawer of backup projects. Then our editor Andrei went to Riga to learn media know-how from the creators of *Meduza* (an independent Russian-language news outlet based in Latvia). He came back deeply inspired, with a ready-made concept for a simple, vivid, viral, and useful site whose look and content perfectly matched its name.
So today we are pleased to present our Leviathan—an endlessly long feed of absurd, insane, cynical, and inexplicable facts, quotes, figures, and images that make up the news agenda in Russia today. Each item can be shared separately and shown to your friends on Facebook or to your parents on Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network)—and if they scroll through this tail to the very end, they are guaranteed to rethink their attitude toward the chaos, absurdity, and cynicism that define our country’s public and political life today.
We decided to launch *Leviathan* at the same time the new State Duma began its work, because it embodies that very chaos, absurdity, and cynicism.
https://leviathan.fbk.info/ An ongoing diary of Russian madness.