(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – July 3, 2014) RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media, featuring news of the revival of negotiations between EU ministers and parties to the conflict in Ukraine, reports on the resumption of intense fighting in Donetsk, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, and analysis of the possibility […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 3, 2014) Leading Russian search engine Yandex will not have to register with the government as a media outlet, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Wednesday, setting a precedent that suggests search engines’ news aggregating sites may be safe from a wave of heightened regulation of the Internet. “Based on the results of our inspection, […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headliines – rbth.ru – Nikolai Litovkin, RBTH – July 2, 2014) A law making it illegal to use swearwords in television, movies, literature, media reporting, concerts, and theatrical productions entered into force on July 1. Violators will face stiff fines. Prominent figures have expressed their dismay over the ban, arguing that it will limit cultural expression. Russia’s […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – July 2, 2014) As a video of the death of Channel One cameraman Anatoly Klyan went viral ahead of his memorial service on Wednesday, the world got its starkest glimpse yet of the reality faced by journalists on the ground in Ukraine: The 68-year-old veteran war reporter is literally shown bleeding out […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Nikolai Litovkin, RBTH – June 30, 2014) The events surrounding Ukraine have not only dragged the world into a new information war but have also revealed serious differences in how the powers that be perceive reality. Some of Russia’s most respected experts in foreign policy discussed the information war over Ukraine in a […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – June 25, 2014) RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media, featuring analysis of the failure of the truce agreed in eastern Ukraine, the prospects for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s peace project, and Putin’s surprising request to Russia’s Federation Council to retract the permission it […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – June 23, 2014) As we approach July 1, the day after which obscenities will officially be banned in Russian art, the Russian creative community is doing what it can to make sense of a concerted push on the part of the government to regulate the arts and artistic expression. By writing the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – June 20, 2014) Half of all Russians consider television to be the most reliable source of information for domestic and international news coverage, a recent study of the Russian media environment has shown. The study published Tuesday by independent pollster Levada Center found that 50 percent of Russians – and 65 percent of Muscovites – […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – June 17, 2014) RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media on the latest gas crisis between Moscow and Kiev, which culminated yesterday with Russia cutting off supplies to Ukraine after talks had once again reached a dead end. Kommersant The gas issue was the […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – June 16, 2014) RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media, featuring discussion of the significance of Saturday’s riots outside the Russian embassy in Kiev, Russia’s outrage over the West’s failure to condemn the acts, and NATO plans to offer Ukraine aid in reforming its […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – June 11, 2014) RBTH presents a selection of views from leading Russian media, featuring discussion of the need for Russia to develop a coherent strategy on supporting the Donetsk and Lugansk “republics”, Poroshenko’s “humanitarian corridor” and the prospects for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, and the surprising […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexei Lossan, special to RBTH – June 12, 2014) Independent news organizations including oppositional television channel Dozhd TV and the Slon and Bolshoi Gorod media outlets are to be brought into one media group and floated on the Moscow stock market. The IPO will be the first by a Russian media holding since […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Joanna Szostek – June 11, 2014) Joanna Szostek is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL The long propaganda campaign waged by Russian television channels against Ukraine’s political leadership and the West is continuing unabated. This past weekend, one Sunday night news programme headlined the ‘savagery’ (zverstvo) of ‘Fascism’ in Ukraine, which […]
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[“Who Ordered Politkovskaya’s Murder?” – New York Times editorial – June 10, 2014] The New York Times comments on the recent convictions of five additional men for involvement in the 2006 assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya: Almost eight years after the gruesome murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s most respected investigative journalists, Moscow’s highest criminal court has finally sentenced five […]
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MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti) – A Moscow City Court prosecutor said on Monday the life sentence handed down to those found guilty of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder was the highest achievement of Russian justice, but the outcome will only satisfy the complainants when the mastermind of the murder is established. “We find the sentence lawful, founded and just. This is […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Matthew Bodner – June 2, 2014) On May 22, state-owned telecoms company Rostelecom launched the first version of its new search engine, Sputnik. A week later, the engine, which some analysts see as the latest move in the Kremlin’s ongoing crusade against the uncontrolled and subversive Internet, has fallen flat. On the day that Sputnik […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Aleksandra Vagner – LUHANSK, Ukraine, May 29, 2014) Probably the most surprising thing that struck me during my four days reporting from the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine last week came as soon as I arrived. Men armed with automatic weapons stood around the station, watching everything that was going on. From what I’d read, I had expected such men […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – May 26, 2014) RBTH brings together a selection of views from leading Russian media on Petro Poroshenko’s victory in the presidential vote in Ukraine, with comment on the fate of Yulia Tymoshenko, election turnout, the problems experienced by voters in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – May 26, 2014) I forced myself to read the entire article. It was not easy to do. But it had to be done. The Culture newspaper, which made headlines in April by attacking 29 contemporary Russian writers and directors as propagators of “sleaze, obscenities and perversion,” is at it again. This time […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – May 20, 2014) The deputy chief of a pro-Kremlin television holding has dismissed as an “accidental error” his network’s use of footage from a gunfight in the North Caucasus to illustrate supposed recent anti-Russian violence in eastern Ukraine, a news report said. The footage – first used in a Rossiya television report […]
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MOSCOW. May 15 (Interfax) – The following is a digest of Moscow newspapers published on May 15. Interfax does not accept liability for information in these stories. POLITICS & ECONOMICS Ukraine is preparing to place $1 billion in Eurobonds on the open market that will be guaranteed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the country’s transition government announced Wednesday. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – May 8, 2014) Internet companies have found a forum to defend their interests before the government following a meeting Wednesday with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and an array of high-ranking officials. During the meeting, Shuvalov ordered a working group formed within the Communications and Press Ministry, which will bring together […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 29, 2014) Russia’s communications minister has said there is no reason why independent channel Dozhd cannot return to cable television packages, in a sign of hope for the cash-strapped station. Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikoforov said nothing was preventing Dozhd from being carried by cable television providers, and that the state was […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexei Eremenko, RBTH – April 25, 2014) During his annual live TV call-in show on April 18, President Vladimir Putin promised that authorities will stop pressuring the liberal Dozhd TV channel. Dozhd (“Rain”) is now hoping to get picked up again by the cable providers that dropped it at the beginning of the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 19, 2014) The State Duma’s ethics committee will investigate Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky after the firebrand politician directed a particularly crude and offensive outburst at reporters on Friday. After being asked whether Russia should retaliate against the travel restrictions placed on Russian men by Ukraine, Zhirinovsky went on a foul-mouthed tirade and […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – D. Garrison Golubock – April 21, 2014) A favorable comment made by President Vladimir Putin during his annual call-in show on Thursday seems to have triggered a change of fortune for embattled independent television channel Dozhd, which is threatened with closure after being dropped by numerous major television operators. “If the disappearance of Dozhd from […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 11, Issue 73 – Pavel Felgenhauer – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – April 17, 2014) The Ukrainian crisis and the “reunification” of Crimea with the rest of Russia dominated President Vladimir Putin’s almost four-hour-long televised national phone-in-an annual PR performance that had been previously dominated by discussion of pensions, utility payments, inflation, wages and other internal “bread […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 17, 2014) Breaking his tradition of publicly tongue-lashing opponents at home and abroad, President Vladimir Putin assumed a non-predatory stance Thursday to diffuse fears of escalation of the ongoing rift with the West over the Ukraine crisis during his annual live call-in show broadcast on national television and online. “I believe […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 15, 2014) Nabi Abdullaev, a former deputy editor-in-chief of The Moscow Times, will replace Andrew McChesney at the helm of the newspaper later this week, MT publisher Ekaterina Movsumova said Monday. Abdullaev, who most recently headed RIA Novosti’s foreign-language news service, said he would concentrate on further developing The Moscow Times into a major […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Tom Balmforth – KYIV – April 12, 2014) Just a few weeks ago, Yehor Sobolev was warned not to expect Ukraine’s parliament to pass legislation that would require judges to be screened for corruption and political bias. But on April 8, lawmakers did just that when a so-called “judicial lustration” bill sailed through the Verhovna Rada following street rallies that […]
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MOSCOW. April 10 (Interfax) – A member of the Human Rights Council, a Kremlin advisory body, has defended Moscow’s decision not to renew a contract to broadcast Voice of America in Russia. “Russian officials were not proactive in this situation. In this information war, which hasn’t been unleashed by Russia, it’s Moscow that’s been behaving in a gentlemanly way, and […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 9, 2014) Secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia [UJR] Pavel Gutionov has described the current state of affairs in Russian journalism as the most serious crisis in its entire history. “Our profession is experiencing the most serious crisis in its entire history. It has even been suggested that journalism will not survive at all,” […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Peter Spinella – April 7, 2014) President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold his annual call-in show on April 17, Russian media reports said Monday. The question-and-answer session will be broadcast on national television and radio stations and is expected to cover “Crimea, the international situation, the domestic economy and the ruble,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Daisy Sindelar – April 1, 2014) A pro-Kremlin political news site says it has developed a computer algorithm to determine which media outlets are the most anti-Russian. The politonline.ru website, part of the Pravda.ru media holding, says it has created a special system that vets media content for suggestive words and phrasing that cast the Russian […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – April 1, 2014) Independent television channel Dozhd has extended its operation for at least 50 days in a fundraising campaign launched to save the channel after major cable networks refused to air it. The money was collected during a week-long telethon from March 24 to 30 that sold yearly subscriptions to Dozhd, […]
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(Interfax – March 31, 2014) The Russian Presidential Human Rights Council urges taking the professional community’s opinions into account when making decisions on closing mass media outlets. “These offensives against independent mass media outlets are characterized with the fact that owners or administrative people are leaving the legal field and operate on general notions of morality, interpreting them in their […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Brian Whitmore – March 20, 2014) Propaganda works. Or at least it’s working for the time being. In concluding his speech to a joint session of parliament this week, Vladimir Putin claimed that 92 percent of Russians favored the annexation of Crimea. The number was inflated, but not by much, according to Lev Gudkov, director of […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – March 14, 2014) In the Russian media, the season of change, some of it sad and sudden, continues. Now it is my turn to say my goodbye and announce my imminent departure from The Moscow News. I also want to use this platform to give everyone who is reading this – particularly […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – March 12, 2014) Overworked and understaffed, Russia’s fledgling Intellectual Property Rights Court is watching nervously as its case load continues to climb. “Compared to analogous courts in Europe, we have a very high case load … and an increase in workload leads to the risk of a decline in the quality of […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Christopher Brennan – March 11, 2014) Russia’s largest television stations broadcast all over the country, bringing the same faces to Muscovites, Siberians and Caucasus natives alike. However, a new series is taking this a step further, representing Russia’s ethnic diversity in one sitcom family and confronting the controversial topic of race head on. A new […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – March 12, 2014) RIA Novosti, Russia’s largest state-owned news agency, is undergoing the final stages of its liquidation three months after President Vladimir Putin decreed its dismantlement and mandated the creation of Rossia Segodnya, a global news agency to be headed by a Kremlin loyalist. New details regarding the structure of Rossia […]
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(RIA Novosti – March 12, 2014) One of Ukraine’s largest television providers has announced it will suspend broadcasts of several major Russian channels, the UNN Ukrainian news agency said Wednesday. The TV provider Volya, with about 20 percent of the market, said it was notifying subscribers across the country about the service changes, UNN reported. On Tuesday, the National Television […]
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(Interfax – March 4, 2014) The heads of Russian leading television stations have responded to their Ukrainian colleagues’ call for unbiased coverage of the ongoing events in Ukraine. The general directors of Channel One, the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) and NTV, Konstantin Ernst, Oleg Dborodeyev and Vladimir Kulistikov, said in an official statement, posted on the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – February 27, 2014) Less than two weeks ahead of the deadline set by the Kremlin for the abolishment of major state-funded news agency RIA Novosti, its employees say they still lack details about what will happen to their jobs or when the company will cease its work. The wire service is set […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, February 26, 2014) Despite the fact that the Ukrainian revolution is far from over, many in Moscow are asking where the next such outburst of turmoil and change in the former Soviet space will happen, a question prompted by the fact that most Russians were “unprepared” for what happened in Kyiv, according […]
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(opendemocracy.net – David Marples – February 20, 2014) David Marples is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Canada. Author of 13 books, he is also President of the North American Association for Belarusian Studies. What is happening in Ukraine has provoked outrage and shock in the west. But do we really understand what […]
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BAGHDAD. Feb 20 (Interfax) – Moscow is concerned by how the West has been trying to impact on the situation in Ukraine, and also notes that the situation in this country is being misrepresented, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We are most deeply concerned by what is going on in Ukraine, and in particular by how Western capitals have […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – February 19, 2014) Yekaterina Pavlova, a former deputy head of the pro-Kremlin Voice of Russia radio station, has been appointed chief executive of opposition-leaning radio station Ekho Moskvy. The decision Tuesday triggered speculation that the Kremlin was seeking to bring the station under its control. The news also comes shortly after Dozhd, […]
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[“What the Papers Say, Feb. 18, 2014” – Moscow Times/BBC Monitoring – themoscowtimes.com/news/article/what-the-papers-say-feb-18-2014/494765.html] The Moscow Times and BBC Monitoring review Russian print publications. Nezavisimaya Gazeta 1. Alexandra Samarina article headlined “Waiting for personnel changes” predicts that a number of senior officials including governors may lose their jobs after the Sochi Olympics. The author reports on the meeting of the State […]
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MOSCOW, February 18 (RIA Novosti) – The long-serving director of Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy was replaced Tuesday by a manager from state-owned media, sparking fears of editorial changes at the liberal news outlet. Yury Fedutinov was removed as director of Ekho Moskvy after more than 20 years in the job and replaced by Yekaterina Pavlova during a shareholder meeting, […]
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