Tommy Robinson and the London News Website Linked to a Putin-Backed Propaganda Network
In February 2020, far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) travelled to Moscow and St Petersburg, giving interviews to Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT and meeting figures linked to Russian nationalist movements. Since then, questions have long swirled about his Russian connections and the sources of his funding amid mounting legal debts.
Byline Times can now reveal that years before that trip to Russia, Robinson was hired as a “goodwill ambassador” for an unregistered charity fronting a secretive Russian propaganda network that worked directly for President Vladimir Putin’s administration, and has ties to a sanctioned Russian state-linked oil giant.
The unregistered charity – the MMBF Trust – is part of a network centred around the London Post.
At first glance, the London Post resembles a local news website covering UK gambling regulations and London restaurant reviews. It has featured articles about Borough Market’s grocery ordering service, and good spots for ramen.
But sources who spoke to Byline Times described it as part of what intelligence analysts call a ‘black PR’ operation: coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion while concealing their true sponsors.
Robinson’s appointment to the unregistered charity was first reported by anti-extremism organisation Hope Not Hate in 2017.
Last year, Press Gazette revealed that the London Post – which had announced the appointment – had surprising Russia links.
Byline Times can now reveal further details about the suspected funding behind the website, including cryptocurrency payment trails to Russian ‘black PR’ agents, and ties to major Russian state enterprises.
The site’s Russian backers operate through a company called Moscow Media Group.
Its subsidiary, MMG Brainstorming, has publicly advertised its work for Putin’s presidential office, the State Duma, the Federation Council, and various Russian Government ministries and agencies.
Moscow Media Group also has ties to a wide range of Russian state-backed energy and infrastructure enterprises, including to the sanctioned Russian oil company Gazprom Neft.
The Unregistered Charity
The public face behind the London Post is a Zimbabwean-English film producer named Matthew C Martino (also known as Mathetes Chihwai).
Martino runs a UK-based entity called the Matthew Martino Benevolent Fund (MMBF Trust), the website of which states that it is a charity supporting filmmakers and others who wish to study or work in the performing arts.
However, the organisation neither registered with the UK’s Charity Commission nor provided any notable support to filmmakers.
In 2017, the MMBF Trust made waves on social media when the London Post announced Tommy Robinson as its new goodwill ambassador.
Robinson, the co-founder of the English Defence League, is a convicted fraudster whose disinformation helped fuel the 2024 Southport riots which involved unprecedented racist violence.
According to the London Post‘s announcement, Robinson was hired by the MMBF Trust to help oversee a £100,000 arts grant programme that would launch in February 2018.
The nature of the work Robinson undertook for the MMBF Trust is unclear. But the charity appears to have been a front to provide legitimacy to a Russian-backed propaganda operation.
The 2Trom Network
The London Post is part of a media consortium of ostensibly British news organisations, operating under an entity called 2Trom News Group.
Although incorporated in the UK in November 2018, it appears to have been first set-up in Gibraltar. Other publications in the 2Trom network include websites such as Brit Daily, Northern News UK, and the Hertfordshire Herald.
There is little public information available about 2Trom News Group’s shareholders: a Russian, Viktor Tokarev, who is also a director; and Brit Lewis Drazen, a Witham-based company executive.
The most visible person linked to 2Trom is one of its directors, Matthew Martino – who hired Tommy Robinson as an ambassador for the MMBF Trust.
Archived versions of the London Post website confirm that the MMBF Trust had initially supported the website.
Little more can be gleaned about Martino himself, other than that he owned a seemingly related company – MMBF Limited – which he renamed in 2019. He is also listed as a property developer on a US real estate platform.
So who, or what, is behind the 2Trom network?
The Kremlin Connection
According to 2Trom’s website, another owner of the company behind the London Post alongside Martino is the Moscow Media Group (MMG).
Though at first glance, the nature of the MMG’s origins is opaque, a deeper analysis reveals that it is deeply embedded in Russian state influence operations.
Russian corporate records and archived webpages seen by Byline Times show that MMG consists of a group of Russian communications companies owned by Igor Kuzin, with direct ties to the Kremlin.
These records also show that Kuzin is affiliated with several marketing companies, including MMG Brainstorming, which is part of MMG.
According to a cached version of MMG’s website, uncovered by Press Gazette, the Russian PR group’s specialisms include marketing, “information campaigns”, “reputation management”, “government relations communications”, and advertising.
Archived webpages further reveal that MMG owns a subsidiary, MMG Brainstorming – which lists Kuzin as a partner and head of strategic marketing – and confirms its work on the “implementation of large special projects, including in co-operation with the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, and various ministries and agencies”.
Kuzin has other high-level Russian ties.
As CEO of a Moscow-based software development company, Enginr, according to his LinkedIn profile, Kuzin employs a Russian IT consultant named Vasily Maveev who simultaneously works for a major Russian Government contractor called “Smart Analytics Russia”. The latter is based in Perm, approximately 1,150 kilometres east of Moscow, which is a long-standing hub for Russian state-linked defence, heavy engineering, chemicals, and energy industries.
Smart Analytics Russia’s clients include a swathe of key Russian state bodies and state-controlled enterprises: Gazprom Neft, the oil subsidiary of the Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom (both of which are subject to US, UK, and EU sanctions); Russian Post, the wholly state-owned national postal and logistics service; Zarubezhneft, a government-owned oil company focused on foreign projects; the Analytical Centre for the Government of the Russian Federation, a policy and data advisory body reporting directly to the Russian Government; Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), the official state statistics authority; and FSK EES, Russia’s high-voltage electricity transmission grid operator majority owned by Rosseti, Russia’s state-controlled electricity grid holding company.
Tommy Robinson, then, was appointed an ambassador for a propaganda operation with direct commercial ties to Vladimir Putin’s administration and Russia’s sanctioned state oil industry.
The Orthodox Church Pipeline
The individuals behind the London Post network have their own direct links to Putin’s inner circle.
Kuzin’s partner in MMG Brainstorming, Alexander Chernavsky, its head of corporate business training practice, is deeply integrated within the Russian Orthodox Church. It has repeatedly been criticised for helping to launder propaganda and for its close affiliation to the Kremlin.
Chernavsky is also the director of an NGO, the Mission for the Revival of Traditional Values of the Russian People; and heads a group named the Military Orthodox Mission.
In 2012, Kuzin and Chernavsky travelled to Fort Ross, a historic park in California which was the site of the southernmost Russian settlements in North America in the early 1800s. There they met with long time Putin associate, Vladimir Vinokurov, who was the then Consul General in San Francisco, and has gone on to serve as Russian ambassador to several Caribbean nations.
Approximately a decade later, Chernavsky was at a World Russian People’s Council event where he presented the Order of Nicholas II to Maria Zakharova, Director of Information at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Zakharova has been sanctioned by the United States and the EU, with the latter identifying her as a “central figure of the government propaganda” who “promoted the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine”.
The Black PR Operation
Dotted between benign stories on the London Post are those which do not fit the website’s wider content.
These include incendiary allegations that a Georgian billionaire named Tamaz Somkhishvili was behind anti-government protests last year in Tbilisi; and accusations of corruption against Anatoly Loktionov, former Vice President of the Russian oil company Rosneft.
A source linked to a businessman targeted by the London Post told Byline Times that the article attacking him had been commissioned by a business rival, who paid a Russian agent named Mikhail Sakulin in cryptocurrency.
The source described Sakulin as a ‘black PR’ operative who takes payments to place disparaging articles across dozens of websites.
Cryptocurrency payments linked to these campaigns have been traced to wallets owned by Sakulin, though like the 2Trom News Group’s shareholders Drazen and Tokarev, little else is publicly known about him.
Digital currencies allow money to flow across borders beyond the reach of banking regulators and sanctions enforcement, making them ideal for covertly sponsoring extremist movements and disinformation networks.
Russia has openly embraced cryptocurrency as a tool to circumvent Western financial oversight – in 2024 Vladimir Putin signed legislation recognising digital currencies as property and backing payment systems designed to evade sanctions.
Tommy Robinson’s connection to a crypto-funded propaganda network fits this pattern.
The evidence indicates that, when he was announced as an ambassador at the MMBF Trust, he also became an ambassador for a Russian state propaganda operation masquerading as British journalism.
Tommy Robinson, Matthew Martino, Igor Kuzin, and Alexander Chernavksy did not respond to requests for comment.