Artemy Lebedev

"Business lynch", "spanking"

One of the headings of the site was that anyone could send Lebedev a graphic object or a website, and he, in turn, made up his critical opinion of this work. The column was called "Spanking" and was published quarterly. Later, the heading was renamed "Polit spanking". By 2006, the category was closed and removed from the site. On September 1 of the same year, the column was restored and called "Business Lynch", but now it was not only Lebedev who reviewed it. In September 2019, the project was terminated.

In 2020, Lebedev appeared in a promotional video in support of 2020 Russian constitutional referendum. Russian President Vladimir Putin later awarded Lebedev with an Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" in the 2nd degree for his contributions to the Russian segment of the Internet.

Artemy Lebedev Studio designed the official logo for the region of Crimea shortly after its 2014 Russian annexation, a step which drew criticism as being aligned with the occupied status of the territory.

Lebedev was banned from entering Ukraine in March 2017. According to the Holodomor National Museum, Lebedev actively supports the Russian invasion, has travelled to occupied Crimea and Donbas, and has made public statements denying the existence of a Ukrainian nation-state (“there are no Ukrainians, Ukraine is a region of Russia”).

In March 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) charged Lebedev with collaborationism and justifying Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine. The charges relate to his 2022 visits to occupied Ukrainian territory (including the Ukrainian city of Mariupol and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant) in June 2022 and propaganda activities. Lebedev called the visit one of "my life's small joys." In July 2023, two Kyiv apartments owned by Lebedev were seized by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice.

Lebedev was barred from entering Latvia in 2024 and Armenia in 2025.