> The newspaper was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010.

I had no idea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Independent

Their articles used to get upvoted to Reddit front page constantly. I guess in hindsight this was probably just another Russian propaganda project.