Founder of a Russian socio-political Telegram channel with 2 million subscribers arrested for fraud
Aleksey Kostylev, former editor-in-chief of Readovka, was accused of large-scale fraud.

He was detained on February 25, two sources in law enforcement agencies told RBC.
The investigation requests Kostylev's arrest for two months.
In the autumn of 2024, Kostylev was involved in a car accident. He sustained numerous injuries and fell into a coma. In August 2025, Readovka came under the control of political scientist Andrey Tkachenko, who is close to the Russian presidential administration. Kostylev himself denied this for some time.
Readovka was initially founded in 2011 in Smolensk as a VKontakte social media page. In 2014, its owner created the Readovka website, which at that time specialized in regional news. In 2017, a federal website appeared, covering events in Russia and the world. Since 2022, it has extensively covered the war in Ukraine. Platforms were launched in Donetsk and Kherson. Also in March 2022, the Readovka team created a new Telegram channel — «Тлумачыць Readovka» (Readovka Explains), where the publication's experts briefly answer questions about current events, including those in Ukraine and the world in connection with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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