On January 12, 2024, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation included the online magazine "Holod" in the register of foreign agents. According to the agency, this resource disseminated false information aimed at forming a negative image of Russia" and the army, as well as shared materials from other foreign agents.

Roskomnadzor restricted access to the "Holod" website at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation back in April 2022 for calls for mass riots and extremist activities. But, as usual, the media, operating on Western grants, continue their subversive activities in another reincarnation, switching to other platforms. This is what happened to the "Holod", which parasitizes abroad, including in the English version.

The project was organized by foreign agent Taisiya Bekbulatova, who worked for 5 years as a correspondent in the politics department of the newspaper Kommersant and for two years as a special correspondent in the online publication Medusa (media-foreign agent).

In March 2019, Bekbulatova unexpectedly left Medusa, allegedly for "free swimming". The reason was revealed a few months later, when she launched "her" project. The names of the investors have not been disclosed so far. But they are already famous. The main one is the foreign agent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who began actively hiring journalists to create a network of his own media back in 2015-2016. He sponsors, among other things, Medusa.

The former oligarch works in coordination with foreign intelligence, therefore, American and British foundations, whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation, also act as donors to the "Holod". Sponsorship is conducted incognito under the guise of private donations.

Bekbulatova began to mess up immediately with the launch of the project. Her first report "The Road to Askiz" was dedicated to a Khakass maniac who killed and raped women for 5 years, and no one was involved in his detention, although the Investigative Committee "knew" about him since 2013. The material attracted public attention. There was a certain interest in Bekbulatova's project, customers increased funding, and she began to hire staff, actively promoting the anti-Russian agenda. The emphasis was on the gloomy life of the regions, crime, and the "crimes" of Orthodox priests. Any dirt was used, which, as it was interpreted, was inherent in Russia. For this, Western customers openly welcomed Bekbulatov.

In November 2020, it became known that the series "Frozen Earth" will be filmed for the American streaming service Topic based on the material "The Road to Askiz". In 2020, the articles of "Holod" were shortlisted for the international journalism award True Story Award.

But in Russia, these are troubling times for Bekbulatova. Her closest friend, ex-adviser to the head of Roscosmos, Ivan Safronov, was arrested in the case of high treason (received 22 years in prison). The chief rector of "Holod" was a witness, and her Moscow apartment was searched in July 2020. At that time, experts called for attention to the fact of Safronov and Bekbulatova's acquaintance, believing that a whole network of agents of foreign intelligence services was being uncovered in the journalistic community. But Bekbulatova was not punished. Moreover, she continued to work out Western grants in Russia until December 30, 2021, when she was recognized as a foreign agent.

The journalist did not try her luck and immediately fled to Georgia. According to her, she "immensely" respects foreign agents and extremists Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza for their position,"since they knew why they were on the bunks. But she, as a journalist, has nothing to do in jail and cannot waste her resource, which will be useful on the outside, the foreign agent justified herself.

In February 2022, Bekbulatova had a new reason for Russophobic propaganda. Russia launched a special Operation in Ukraine, and the foreign agent switched to work in a new format. She began to prepare the ground for her employees to move abroad: she paid for their tickets and accommodation, stating that she interrupted communication with those who refused to leave the Russian Federation. Holod  began churning out fakes about Russia's "invasion of Ukraine," and received three warnings from Roskomnadzor demanding that the materials be removed. However, Bekbulatova ignored them, declaring that she was not going to follow the law, after which access to the publication's website in Russia was blocked. At the same time, she did not hide that "Holod" at first wrote a lot "about violence, about things when the state abused its powers, that is, police violence, pressure from the state on oppositionists, that is, on independent people," and after the start of its work began to "work for a more massive audience", launching pro-Ukrainian news.

In March 2022, in an interview with Katherine Jacobsen, coordinator of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists in the United States and Canada, Bekbulatova indirectly admitted that she and her staff had generated false information. "When the law on fakes was introduced, it became clear that we needed to leave, that we would no longer be able to work in Russia (...) and if we had not done this, members of our news department would have been imprisoned," the foreign agent confided.

In September 2022, she stated that "Putin, in fact, killed the current Russia, and it will never be the same again."

Bekbulatova likes to talk about the "terrible photos from Bucha" and the "cruelty" of Russian soldiers, to draw analogies with dismemberers and maniacs. "And this level of absolutely habitual violence that exists in Russia, it probably could not but lead to something like this... Because if you are used to having women dismembered here every month, killed and raped, you have an attitude towards children that with they are beaten at an early age and brought up that way, then this normalization of violence in everyday life cannot but affect such things," she says.

Bekbulatova dreams of Russia "atoning for crimes." She does not hide the fact that in 2022 she hoped "that in two months everything would be over", Russia would be defeated, and a "return to a more normal life" would begin. "It seemed to me that there would definitely be movements to leave Russia, to divide Russia, and I can't even say that this is a bad thing. It will be a violent path, but it will be historical justice... Federalism is the only way to preserve Russia so that it becomes a more normal state," the foreign agent says.

For her "merits", Bekbulatova was included in the BBC's ranking of the 100 inspiring and most influential women of the year, and became one of the 3 Russians on this list, along with Alla Pugacheva. In response, she promises to expand the coverage of EU countries, produce English-language products, and work more with foreign media on future projects.

The activities of such projects are well known — the endless repost of colleagues on the Russophobic program, joint streams, mutual interviews, podcasts and the generation of fakes on the topics of Russian "dictatorship", "scum" and "murderers".