Blogger Viktoria Bonya has posted an AI-generated video on her Instagram in which she appears as a superhero battling propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, blogger Artemy Lebedev, and State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov.
In the clip, Bonya — cast as Spider-Man — webs Solovyov’s mouth shut, ties up Lebedev as he hurls insults, and knocks Milonov off his feet. “I’ve had enough,” she says in the video.
Within 9 hours of being posted, the video had accumulated 5 million views and 242,000 likes. In the caption, Bonya called for creating “a women’s community where we can build beauty on this planet together.”
The AI clip followed a new address by Bonya in which she responded to criticism and insults directed at her by Solovyov and Milonov, as well as to remarks Lebedev had made about women. That video drew 11.5 million views and 759,000 likes in 15 hours.
“There’s so much talk right now about traditional values. […] Is it a traditional value when grown men on live television, on federal channels, allow themselves to insult women — calling them escorts, calling them old, telling them to go [perform a sex act]? […] Why are people like that in the public eye today, representing the interests of our people? Isn’t it time they retired?” Bonya wrote in the caption.
She urged her followers to stop watching Solovyov’s programs and Lebedev’s blog, and said she was preparing a class-action lawsuit against the men who had insulted her, inviting other women who had been publicly insulted by them to join.
Solovyov and Milonov had been criticizing and insulting Bonya after she recorded an address to Vladimir Putin. Her grievance against Lebedev, based on the video, relates to his remarks about other women.
Viktoria Bonya published an address “on behalf of the people” to Vladimir Putin on April 14, listing 5 issues about which, in her view, the President was not being given the full picture — among them flooding in Dagestan, pollution on beaches near Anapa, and internet restrictions. By April 19, the video had been viewed 28.5 million times and received 1.5 million likes.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the address, saying it touched on “resonant topics” and that “a great deal of work is already underway on them, a large number of people are involved, and none of it has been left unattended.” After Peskov’s remarks, Bonya recorded another video thanking the Kremlin for “not looking the other way.”
Russia’s Presidential Administration’s political bloc asked pro-Kremlin media not to pursue the story of Bonya’s address, a source at one such outlet told Meduza.
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