The head of Russia's largest state-owned news agency Tass was fired ten days after the infamous and now deceased Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, unsuccessfully rebelled against Putin back in July.
This was reported by the independent Russian newspaper The Moscow Times.
The firing of Tass chief executive Sergey Mikhailov was allegedly due to Russian authorities believing that the news agency was 'too soft' on Prigozhin during the media coverage of the rebellion.
For example, the news agency was among the first to publish images of Wagner soldiers when they took control of the city of Rostov-on-Don.
"Tass covered this too detailed and too quickly. They must have been struck by some kind of madness. They have forgotten that their main task is not to report news, but to create an ideologically correct narrative for the Kremlin," says an anonymous source in the Russian government apparatus to The Moscow Times.
President Putin himself, through his spokesman Dmitry Peskov, denies that Mikhailov was fired, claiming that he left voluntarily.
Tass, established as the Soviet Union's telegram agency in 1925, is Russia's largest news agency and is often considered to be the Kremlin's preferred media channel.
Yevgeny Prigozhin was reported killed in a plane crash on August 23 this year. Before his death, Priogozhin was the leader of the Wagner Group and known as one of Putin's close allies.
Shortly before his death, he led a brief rebellion against the Russian regime, where Wagner troops traveled from the southern city of Rostov towards Moscow. However, before they reached their destination, the entire operation was called off.
