A London-based photographer has successfully sued a local news website only to find that its owners and editors are impossible to track down.
The London Post meanwhile continues to publish with impunity masquerading as a bona fide local news source.
In September 2025 photographer Richard Southall filed a lawsuit at Birmingham Business and Property Courts claiming that The London Post had been using his work without his permission. He filed the claim against owners 2Trom Media Group and director, Russian national Viktor Tokarev.
Southall, a member of the Association of Photographers and the Royal Society of the Arts, produces images for hospitality, leisure and construction industries, among others.
As proceedings developed neither 2Trom nor Tokarev engaged with Southall’s suit, and on 7 December the court handed down a default judgment in favour of Southall to the value of £335. Securing this compensation, however, has proved challenging.
The addresses listed for 2Trom and Tokarev at Companies House comprised block of flats in Harlow and a virtual office in Leyton. Enforcement officers were unable to deliver the verdict.
Looking into The London Post and the rest of 2Trom’s media outlets revealed no real journalists, no real editor and no newsroom.
As revealed by a Press Gazette investigation in August, The London Post forms part of a network of sites masquerading as local news while spreading disinformation with links back to a “Moscow Media Group”.
Hidden amongst an eclectic mix of low quality content (apparently reproduced from press releases or rewritten from elsewhere) are links to a range of illegal gambling sites, and puff and hit pieces on influential figures from former Soviet republics. In just the past month, London Post has shared articles linking to online casinos, ‘Ukrainian Bride’, and pornographic sites amidst its apparently normal output.
London Post articles like: “How the people’s lands came to be owned by Klyachin: The Story of the Biggest Landowner of the Moscow Region” and “Three Billboards Outside Sheremetyevo, Moscow” have cropped up over recent years, and the outlet’s coverage of figures from Russia and Central Asia has become increasingly inflammatory.
One article attacked exiled Kazakh politician Mukhtar Ablyazov as a “false flag and distraction actor”, and in a now-removed article from 2023, the London Post alleged that Russian businessman Magomed Musaev sold McDonalds Russia to a sanctioned oligarch, leading Musaev to accuse the London Post of running an “information campaign” against him coordinated from Russia.
2Trom Media Group is behind outlets the London Post, London TV, Essex TV, Essex TV Mag, Leicester TV, Manchester TV, Midlands TV, and the Daily Brit, and until approximately 2020 the Hertfordshire Herald, Essex Star, Northern Recorder and Sussex Chronicle.
The London Post appears on Google News, meaning the search giant treats it as a bona fide publisher. According to Similarweb it gets around 50,000 site visits per month.
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