Why Britain has become a base for defamatory websites

Most of the scandal stories about Ukrainian and Central Asian businesspeople are written in Russian or Ukrainian. A good share of the network that publishes them, though, runs through Britain. It uses British company registrations, British servers, British local news brands and, when victims sue, British courts. Investigations over the past year show how the UK became part of the infrastructure for defamatory websites aimed at people who may never have set foot in the country.

Local news brands with no local newsroom

The clearest example is a group of sites that look like regional outlets. The London Post, Essex TV, Manchester TV, Midlands TV and The Daily Brit were traced to 2Trom Media Group. Their pages are mostly recycled press releases under generic bylines. Mixed in are long attack pieces on wealthy figures from the former Soviet states, along with promotions for unregulated crypto casinos.

The company’s registered addresses included a ground-floor flat in Harlow, a residential block in Leyton, a flat near Turnpike Lane and a business centre in Letchworth. Nobody at any of them recognised the company. A former senior figure said the brands had since been moved into shell companies with generic names, making the directors harder to identify.

A former student TV channel, Leeds TV, now publishes AI-written local stories alongside similar attack pieces. Its operator confirmed by email that the site takes payment to publish. He listed Kazakh clients, Ukrainian oligarchs and crypto gambling operators among its customers. He also claimed rival sites sell placements for £100 to £500.

Servers in Reading

The Ukrainian-language side of the network relies on British infrastructure too. In one campaign against a company executive, 158 articles ran across 109 domains, and 95 of those domains were hosted on a single server in Reading, England. The same group of sites, including Antikor, Kompromat1, Ruskompromat and Antimafia, showed near-identical IP addresses in US court filings. A technical review of more than 60 domains found shared SSL certificates and hosting fingerprints.

The domains below have been documented publishing duplicate or near-identical content:

Antikor: antikor.com.ua, antikor.info, antikor.ua

Kompromat1: kompromat1.online, kompromat1.info, kompromat1.net, kompromat1.org, kompromat1.media, kompromat1.one, kompromat1.se, kompromat1.press, kompromat1.world

Compromat / Ruskompromat: compromat.pro, compromat-pro.com, kompromat.press, ruskompromat.info, ruskompromat.ru, ruskompromat.pro

Vlasti: vlasti.io, vlasti.se, vlasti.info, vlasti.live, vlasti.vip, vlst.live, vlast.guru

Antimafia: antimafia.se, antimafia.io, antimafia.life, antimaf.pro

Rumafia: rumafia.news, rumafia.io, rumafia.net, rumafia.online

Kartoteka: kartoteka.news, kartoteka.se, kartoteka.press, kartoteka.io

Glavk: glavk.se, glavk.info, glavk.net

Hab.media: hab.media, news.hab.media, crime.hab.media, corruption.hab.media

Sledstvie: sledst.org, sledst.com, sledstvie.info

Nocor: nocor.info, nocor.life

Novosti: novosti.cloud, novostiua.org, novostiua.online

Other linked outlets: repost.news, rozsliduvach.info, rucriminal.info, adcon.info, luxherald.com, lstv.co.uk, trinitybugle.com, obriy.news, politica2.info, ukrainci.com.ua, oplatru24.ru, rp.rv.ua, drama.live

Why a British masthead matters

A site that looks like a British local paper carries more weight than an anonymous Ukrainian portal. That matters most in compliance. London law firm Schillings, which tracks more than 350 junk news sites, says many campaigns aim to cause banking and compliance problems. Articles are packed with sanctions-related terms so that due diligence screening flags the target. A result from what looks like a London newspaper is harder for an analyst to dismiss.

The firm recorded a 355% rise in such sites between 2023 and 2024. It links the increase to cheap AI-generated content.

The limits of a London judgment

British courts have been used against the network, with limited effect. Uzbek financier Ovik Mkrtchyan won more than £220,000 in damages and costs at the High Court against the London Post and its listed owner, Viktor Tokarev. Neither defendant appeared, and the article stayed online for weeks after the ruling. Tokarev appears in official filings and almost nowhere else.

Reputation adviser Michael Macfarlane described the problem. A victim, he said, can spend £117,000 on lawyers to win against “a man who might not exist”.

Victims inside the UK aren’t spared either. A London investment firm founder described more than 20 articles about him appearing within a month, many on sites in countries he had never visited. He believes the campaign was meant to discourage him from testifying in a fraud case. He testified anyway and won.

What sits outside Britain

Not all of the network is British. The Antikor trademark is held by a Panama foundation linked to a company in Belize. Ukrainian law enforcement has named Kostyantyn Chernenko, a former parliamentary assistant who left Ukraine in 2021, as the alleged organiser. Removal is sold separately. A journalist posing as a client was offered a $12,000 annual package in cryptocurrency. Antikor denies charging to publish or delete content.

The British parts — a masthead, a company number, a server, a courtroom — are what give the network its credibility. They are also the parts within reach of UK hosting providers, registrars and courts.