Not every trail leads to casinos, payments, or logistics. Some lead to television. At first glance, ru-tv.eu, also branded as GIN-TV, looks like a simple IPTV service for Russian-speaking audiences across Europe, but a closer look reveals that it belongs to the very same ecosystem as the logistics and IT projects connected to Vladimir Bulantsev, owner of Ekaterinburg s.r.o. The same email (gin@volny.cz), the same Czech phone number (+420 608 758 301), and the same signature at the bottom of the site:
“Designed by Vladimir.”
📺 What ru-tv.eu offers?:
The platform promotes:
over 4,000 TV channels,
streaming via Smart TV, Android, and set-top boxes,
access to Russian news, movie, and music channels.
Among its featured broadcasts are:
News & state-run channels:
Первый канал (Channel One Russia), Россия 1, Россия 24, НТВ, REN TV, 5 Канал, ТВ Центр, РБК, Спас, МИР 24
Entertainment & thematic channels:
TНТ, Дом Кино, Наше Кино, Bridge TV, Europa Plus TV, Карусель, История, Охота и Рыбалка
Many of these outlets are explicitly banned in the European Union.
⚠️ What EU law says?:
Since February 2022, the EU has prohibited broadcasting, retransmission, or distribution of Russian state-controlled media within its territory-including via internet, hosting, IPTV, and streaming.
According to:
Council Regulation (EU) 2022/350
Regulation (EU) 2022/879
Regulation (EU) 2022/2474
Regulation (EU) 2023/427
and later amendments
the following are banned from EU broadcast and retransmission:
Channel One Russia, Rossiya 1, NTV, REN TV, Rossiya 24, TV Centre, RBC TV, Spas, 5 Kanal, MIR 24.
Hosting or distributing these streams from an EU-based server constitutes a violation of Articles 2f and 12 of Council Regulation (EU) 833/2014.
🧩 How it connects to the Bulantsev network?:
The pattern is unmistakable.
Vladimir Bulantsev, the developer behind East-Vector.cz and Eurasia-TransLog.cz, also runs ru-tv.eu / GIN-TV.
The same fingerprints appear everywhere:
identical contact data (gin@volny.cz, +420 608 758 301),
identical DNS/hosting environment (Cloudflare + Web4U),
identical digital signature: “Designed by Vladimir.”
All of these projects-logistics, IT, and media-share a single Czech infrastructure.
💣 When television becomes a sanctions risk:
If ru-tv.eu indeed hosts or retransmits these channels, then it is actively facilitating the distribution of sanctioned content from within the EU. Under EU law, any entity that:
“knowingly and intentionally participates in broadcasting, enabling, or promoting the dissemination of sanctioned content”
is in breach of Union sanctions.
That means the servers and networks of Ekaterinburg s.r.o. could qualify as a technical mechanism for circumventing EU sanctions.
🔍 The bigger picture:
Bulantsev’s network began with logistics companies trading through post-Soviet routes. Now the same servers are streaming Russian TV. Same domains, same infrastructure, different industry- identical direction: East.
This reveals that the ecosystem once presented as an IT or transport hub is in reality a multifunctional network- handling both financial transactions and media dissemination from sanctioned sources.
⚖️ Questions that czech authorities must answer:
Do Czech regulators know that their infrastructure hosts Russian state television streams?
Is Bulantsev deliberately bypassing EU sanctions, or simply exploiting Czech registration as a shield?
And most importantly: is ru-tv.eu just a TV service-or the public face of a much larger system of cross-sector Russian influence?
🔻 Conclusion:
GIN-TV / ru-tv.eu is not a television platform. It is the latest fragment of a web where Czech servers carry Russian interests-from freight routes to propaganda streams. When sanctions meet the network, they expose the connections that paper companies can no longer hide.
