Propaganda is not only television, the internet and radio. It is also the pro-war symbols on the streets of our cities — «Z», «V», «We don’t abandon our own» — and the outdoor advertising plastered with calls to go to war. Here, for example, is an article about a doctor from Tatarstan who saw an ad recruiting contract soldiers and signed up as a volunteer. Here a resident of Bashkiria tells how he saw an ad recruiting volunteers up to the age of 60, went to the front, and now boasts of having captured a «British mercenary». And here a Cossack from Stavropol explains how he ended up at the front: «I was born, got married, had kids… worked the land as an agronomist. One day I was driving through the beautiful city of Pyatigorsk and saw a banner saying they were recruiting volunteers for the Cossack battalion ‘Terek’. When I saw it, I immediately felt a strong desire to join.»
Billboards are usually owned or leased by advertising companies. Protokol found that one such «advertising magnate» in southern Russia actively advertises the war but prefers to live in London.
A Journey to the Edge of Conscience
Roman Gubenko was born in the village (stanitsa) of Poltavskaya. At 18 he registered as an individual entrepreneur. In 1998 he «worked on developing wholesale supplies of plumbing fixtures and rose from manager to commercial director». From 1999 to 2009 he studied economics at institutions in Krasnodar and Moscow. Over the years Gubenko has founded around a dozen legal entities. In 2006 he set up his first company, the advertising agency Mediatron, which later became one of the largest outdoor advertising operators in Krasnodar. Mediatron is registered in Slavyansk-na-Kubani. The company is owned by Roman and Anna Gubenko. Anna is the wife of the man at the centre of this story.
In January 2021, Protokol published an investigation (in Russian), «24 Billboards on the Edge of Conscience». It revealed that Roman Gubenko had obtained permits to install advertising structures through corrupt schemes. Among other things, Gubenko’s scheme relied on the Krasnodar city administration appealing unlawful court rulings while deliberately missing the deadlines. The dispute should never have been heard by courts of general jurisdiction at all: economic disputes are decided by the arbitration (commercial) courts, and that is where an individual entrepreneur should have litigated.
In the summer of 2024, the arbitration court refused to legalise Gubenko’s disputed advertising structures. One of the interim rulings in the case lists the actual and cadastral addresses of 24 screens, some of which Gubenko had already erected and was trying to legalise. To see what the entrepreneur advertises on these structures, we needed the help of Protokol‘s agents in Russia. We asked them to go round the sites and film what was being advertised.
A Journey Beyond the Edge of Conscience
The published ruling contains the addresses of 24 screens, all of them in Krasnodar. At the time of publication we had received videos and photos of all 24 structures listed in the ruling. At least five of them carry ads for military service.
Besides the ads themselves, most of the LED screens show a short clip saying who owns the screen: «Advertising on this screen» followed by the Affix Group logo.
A website that bills itself as «the No. 1 resource for choosing an advertising agency» states that «Mediatron is part of Affix Group, and its team numbers more than 50 employees. The creative agency develops strategies and original ideas, while the media buying division runs advertising campaigns across all types of media, including on its own surfaces.» The rights to the Affix Group trademark belong to M Group, a company Roman Gubenko registered in 2019. He was its sole owner until the end of 2020, when Roman Alexandrovich Sologub became a co-owner. Sologub now owns the company outright. Despite formally giving up his stake in the business, Roman Gubenko continued until recently to defend his right to the advertising structures in the arbitration court.
On a structure on Chekistov Avenue we found a plate naming an individual entrepreneur, Margarita Anatolyevna Gubenko. She is Roman Gubenko’s 64-year-old mother. Leaked databases contain a phone number used by both Margarita Anatolyevna and Roman himself, and the businessman’s mother has lived at the same addresses as our media magnate’s brother, Andrey Gubenko. Using leaked data, we established that Margarita Gubenko was already an employee of RAG «Media-Tron» in 2008. She was employed there in 2010 as well and, by all appearances, still works there.
He Moved to London
Roman’s wife, Anna Gubenko, still co-owns the business with Roman. On her Instagram page she regularly posts photos from London. That is where she lives. This gave us an idea of where else to look for traces of the Gubenko family. Since 2020, Roman has been connected to two companies in the United Kingdom. At ADDCOM AGENCY LTD he has been a director since 1 December 2020. The company’s listed activities are investment funds, advertising agencies and other services. Roman Gubenko’s second London entity is the UK branch of the Russian company LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY «MEDIATRON BUYING». In its filing history we found that Roman Gubenko registered this entity in the UK in March 2020. On 18 September 2023, Anna Gubenko was appointed as the person authorised to represent the British company. Both of them give the same residential address: 60 Holland Street, Flat 1205 Block B, London, SE1 9JF, United Kingdom. Later that same day her role was changed to «person authorised to accept service of documents on behalf of the company». And again, the same day, another change was filed, making Roman Gubenko that person. Nevertheless, in 2023 Anna was moving money to London from the accounts of at least one of the companies.
The company’s director is Yevgenia Shtykh, a business partner of the businessman’s mother, Margarita Gubenko. One of the filings includes the taxpayer number (INN) of a Russian company: 2308244331. Using it, we found Mediatron Buying LLC. Roman Gubenko owns 5% of it; the remaining 95% belongs to a certain Natalya Alexandrovna Gromova. The firm’s director is Yevgenia Shtykh.
Conclusions
Having looked at billboards and screens in Krasnodar, we deliberately mentioned in this story only those listed in the court ruling. In reality, Gubenko owns dozens or even hundreds of times more advertising structures — he sells advertising in Krasnodar, across the Krasnodar Krai and beyond. Of course, he is not the only one. While we were gathering material for this story, people sent us a mass of photos of advertising structures. Most often, beneath the calls to go and fight for money, we saw the logos of Russ Outdoor and Art Side. Russ Outdoor is the largest outdoor advertising operator in all of Russia; it has been in the news a lot recently because of its merger with the Wildberries marketplace. Art Side is Sergey Galitsky’s advertising agency. Incidentally, it carries less war advertising than the others.
What we learned while preparing this story only demonstrates once again one simple thing: having reached the edge of conscience — in our case, by obtaining permits for advertising structures through corruption — it is hard to resist crossing it. Spend long enough running petty «schemes», and sooner or later you stop telling good from evil. That is how Roman Gubenko first became a petty corrupt operator and then an indirect propagandist of aggression.
It is not only, or even mainly, that he places calls to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence on his advertising space — although that too. It is that he physically tries to keep as far away from this war as he can. Like his wife, Anna Gubenko, Roman prefers to spend the money he has made advertising the war — in London.