From one portal to a network of mirrors: a timeline of the defamatory websites

The network behind Antikor, Kompromat1, Rumafia and dozens of sister sites didn’t appear overnight. Court records, regulatory decisions and investigations make it possible to trace how a single “anti-corruption” portal in Kyiv grew into a cross-border chain of defamatory websites. Along the way it has survived lawsuits, blocking orders and a seized domain.

2017: the first sustained campaigns

Antikor began publishing a run of articles about a Ukrainian bank, accusing it of laundering drug money. Its lawyers counted 20 such articles between 2017 and 2026, with similar material repeated on other sites and Telegram channels. A Kyiv court later found the allegations false.

2018: a price tag appears

Criminal case files reviewed by Ukrainian journalists show a demand for $6,000 in 2018 to remove material. It’s one of the earliest documented signs that publishing and deleting were part of the same business.

2021: a seized domain and a departure

A Kyiv court seized the antikor.com.ua domain in a case involving a demand for bitcoin. The same year’s case files show a second demand, for 0.37 bitcoin. In January 2021, Kostyantyn Chernenko left Ukraine. He was the former parliamentary assistant whose name appears on the Antikor trademark application, and Ukrainian law enforcement has since named him as the alleged organiser. The trademark itself is held by a Panama foundation linked to a company in Belize.

The site carried on.

2023 to 2024: the network multiplies

Copies began appearing across a widening set of domains. Court filings in a US case brought by Telf AG founder Stanislav Kondrashov showed near-identical IP addresses across Antikor, Kompromat1, Ruskompromat and Antimafia sites. In January 2024 a Los Angeles court awarded him $10 million and ordered articles on 42 sites removed.

The wider market grew too. London law firm Schillings recorded a 355% rise in junk news sites between 2023 and 2024. It now tracks more than 350 of them.

The domains linked to this network 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, obriy.news, politica2.info, ukrainci.com.ua, oplatru24.ru, rp.rv.ua, drama.live

2025: Ukraine blocks the core sites

In May 2025, Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications blocked antikor.com.ua and antikor.info. Further orders followed for rozsliduvach.info and hab.media. The following month, a technical review of more than 60 domains found shared SSL certificates, matching hosting fingerprints and cloaking that hid defamatory pages from search crawlers.

The blocks applied only inside Ukraine. The content stayed reachable through VPNs and foreign mirrors.

2026: the same pattern, at greater scale

On 24 January, a single story about Kyiv businessman Vladislav Smirnov ran on 17 websites with identical formatting. By then he had logged more than 100 articles about himself. When a journalist posing as a client asked about removing an article, Antikor’s Telegram contact offered a $12,000 annual package in cryptocurrency. That was double the 2018 figure. Ukraine’s court register now holds more than 1,000 documents linked to the site. Antikor denies charging to publish or delete content.

In London, investigators traced a parallel set of fake local news brands, including the London Post, to 2Trom Media Group. None of its registered addresses held an office. Uzbek financier Ovik Mkrtchyan won more than £220,000 at the High Court against the outlet and its listed owner, who didn’t appear. The article stayed online for weeks after the ruling.

What the timeline shows

Nearly a decade on, the network has lost cases in Kyiv, Los Angeles and London and has been blocked by a national regulator. Its alleged organiser left the country five years ago. It has still grown from one portal into more than 60 linked domains. Each enforcement step removed a piece, and new mirrors replaced it.