(Moscow Times – themoscowtime.com – Lara McCoy – May 28, 2015) To celebrate its 10th anniversary this spring, the Russian edition of Yoga Journal didn’t make plans for a huge party, or even a special yoga retreat. Instead, the magazine marked the milestone by launching an extensive analytical survey of yoga in Russia and its practitioners, which appears in the […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – May 25, 2015) The United States on Friday announced that U.S. companies can still give users in Crimea access to a range of free online communications services, despite an earlier U.S. ban on providing any services to the region after it was annexed by Russia last year. The decision will allow U.S. Internet companies such […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – May 13, 2015) After scientists across Russia lost access to thousands of academic journals on Tuesday due to the ruble’s sharp devaluation, Education Minister Dmitry Livanov vowed to restore access to academic publishing giant Springer, Russian media reported. Universities and research institutions across the country lost access to Springer due to a […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – May 8, 2015) Russia’s leading social network VK has beaten the country’s biggest television channel in the battle for viewers’ attention, data from media research firm TNS Russia showed. VK, previously known as VKontakte, had 13.2 million daily users in March this year, while state-owned giant Channel One had an audience of […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – May 8, 2015) Fourteen percent of Russians do not support state intervention when it comes to the content and dissemination of artistic creations, the survey also showed. A vast majority of Russians think the state should censor artistic creations believed to be vulgar, immoral or harmful to society, according to a survey […]
» Read more
Maidan was meant to set Ukrainian media free, but the press remains dependent on the oligarchs. (opendemocracy.net – Otar Dovzhenko – May 6, 2015) Otar Dovzhenko lectures at the School of Journalism at Ukrainian Catholic University, L’viv and is the former editor of Telekritika, Ukraine’s leading platform for media commentary. He has been involved in monitoring Ukrainian media since 2005. On 25 […]
» Read more
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – bne IntelliNews – April 30, 2015) Finnish publishing company Sanoma has sold its 33.3% share in the Russian business daily Vedomosti to publishing executive Demyan Kudryavtsev, in the latest shake-up to Russia’s media landscape caused by new legislation limiting foreign ownership. The stake in Delovoi Standard, the publisher of the daily, was sold to […]
» Read more
A Finnish media company on Thursday said it would sell its one-third stake in Vedomosti, Russia’s most influential business newspaper, as well as ownership of The Moscow Times, the country’s only English-language daily, to a Russian buyer.
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 30, 2015) Finnish media group Sanoma said Thursday it would sell The Moscow Times newspaper to a Russian businessman. Sanoma has agreed to sell United Press, which publishes newspapers and magazines in Russia including The Moscow Times, and signed a deal to sell its minority stake in business daily Vedomosti, the company said in […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 30, 2015) Western governments and institutions are scrambling to devise a commensurate response to Russia’s state-run media offensive, analysts told The Moscow Times on Wednesday amid a wave of reports of Western governments seeking to beef up their own media capabilities. When the Russian authorities moved to establish in 2005 the international […]
» Read more
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – April 28, 2015) The 150-minute film “The President” about Vladimir Putin is mostly boring and predictable in that it insists that “without Vladimir Vladimirovich nothing in the country will work,” Kseniya Kirillova notes. But she points out that there are three “lessons” contained in the film that must not be ignored. First, she argues, […]
» Read more
The murder of a pro-Russian opposition politician and a journalist in Kyiv threaten to further divide Ukraine. While many are pointing the finger at Moscow, others are blaming the government for not doing enough.
» Read more
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rep. Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, addresses what he characterizes as a Russian information war, featuring anti-American propaganda and conspiracy theories. Of concern to Royce is that U.S. international broadcasting services that played a stronger role during the Cold War have “withered,” such that Russian propaganda will flourish unless the U.S. services […]
» Read more
Peter Pomeranzev Senior Fellow, Legatum Institute House Committee on Foreign Affairs April 15 2014, ‘Confronting Russia’s Weaponization of Information’ During the Russian invasion of Crimea last year, most of the world’s journalists seemed confused. Most of the West’s leaders were taken aback. But when it was over, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Philip M. Breedlove, defined what had happened […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 15, 2015) Despite the ongoing confrontation with the West over Ukraine, Russian leaders still see it as the ultimate source of prestige and approval, analysts told The Moscow Times on Tuesday after readers of U.S. magazine Time named President Vladimir Putin the most influential person in the world. Putin’s victory came […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 15 (Interfax) – Over 1.5 million questions have been asked in the upcoming Q&A session of President Vladimir Putin to begin at noon on April 16. “We have received 1.2 million calls, approximately 24,000 MMS messages, 285,000 text messages, 6,500 video questions and almost 190,000 e-mails sent to the website,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said. Russians wishing […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – April 8, 2015) Russia’s Investigative Committee has reportedly demanded explanations about government subsidies to media that support opposition positions after a pro-Kremlin daily accused a government agency of supporting publications that pursue “clearly anti-state” policies. The report by the pro-government newspaper Izvestia on Tuesday named some of Russia’s best-known remaining independent-minded media […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 8 (Interfax) – A new version of the Russian president’s website launched on Wednesday took a year to develop within the current budget, no extra funds were allocated, the Kremlin said. “An updated version of the official website of the Russian president has been opened. The previous version was launched more than five years ago, in September 2009. […]
» Read more
(RIA Novosti – Moscow, April 7, 2015) Moscow has no intention of hindering the work of Ukrainian media outlets in response to Kiev’s actions against Russian journalists, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitriy Peskov has said. “Responding in an uncivilized manner to uncivilized behaviour is not something we are in the habit of doing in Moscow. You know that foreign media […]
» Read more
Subject: The Russian Sociological Review Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2015 12:47:05 -0500 From: Nail Farkhatdinov (farkhatdinov@gmail.com) The Russian Sociological Review (sociologica.hse.ru/en), an international peer-reviewed academic journal published by the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (www.hse.ru), invites contributions from philosophy, social sciences and cognate fields for the special issue entitled State of War: Human Condition and Social Orders. […]
» Read more
Subject: new Orthodox journal The Wheel Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 From: Andrei Zolotov (andrei.zolotovrp@rian.ru) I would like to forward to you information about a pretty amazing new project – an English-language journal of Orthodox Christian thought, The Wheel, that has been put together by my friends. It seems to me The Wheel, and in particular its first issue on the […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman, Moscow Times Theater Critic – April 3, 2015) How many bulls does it take to trash a china shop? We may have an answer by the time the dust settles in a seemingly self-refueling controversy that keeps swirling around an opera house in Novosibirsk. Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said this week on […]
» Read more
Such falsification of data is the direct result of Western, but especially Amercian rusology’s transformation from a scholarly field into one dominated by activists. … http://gordonhahn.com/2015/02/20/another-rusological-fail-u-s-experts-continue-to-lie-about-russia-and-ukraine/
» Read more
Lyudmila Savchuk says it was money that wooed her into the ranks of the Kremlin’s online army, where she bombarded website comment pages with eulogies of President Vladimir Putin, while mocking his adversaries. “Putin is great,” “Ukrainians are Fascists,” “Europe is decadent”: Savchuk, 34, listed the main messages she was told to put out on Internet forums after responding to […]
» Read more
The Legatum Institute, on Oct. 14, 2014, hosted a panel discussion on “The Menace of Unreality: Combatting Russian Disinformation in the 21st Century.” The event featured Anne Applebaum, Director of the Legatum Institute’s Transitions Forum, Geoffrey Pyatt, US Ambassador to Ukraine, Oleksander Scherba, Ambassador at Large at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Michael Weiss, Editor-in-Chief of The Interpreter, Peter Pomerantsev, journalist […]
» Read more
(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Viktor Rezunkov – ST. PETERSBURG, March 16, 2015) Last May, Tatiana N decided she wanted a higher salary than the average journalist can expect. After responding to an advertisement in the popular HeadHunter job-search website, she became a Kremlin-paid Internet troll. Tatiana — who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that her last name not […]
» Read more
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – January 23, 2015) “One does not economize on ideology” — so, according to historian Roy Medvedev, went a favorite saying of Mikhail Suslov, the man responsible for maintaining the purity of Marxism-Leninism in 1970’s Soviet Union. While high oil prices held, Russian President Vladimir Putin acted in full accordance with this adage, building an expensive, […]
» Read more
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Nicole Gaouette – April 2, 2015) The troubled U.S. agency responsible for delivering news around the world is being outgunned in Eastern Europe by Russian outlets unrestrained by notions of fact-based journalism. The unequal competition raises fears among U.S. officials that Moscow is winning the information war about events in Ukraine, even as the Russian economy […]
» Read more
Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language TV organ, launched a U.K. edition earlier this month. Headquartered near Westminster, the channel will beam RT’s signature blend of propaganda and tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorizing into millions of British homes. Welcome to Vladimir Putin’s disinformation matrix. RT is merely one part of the Kremlin’s aggressive media effort, as a new Institute of Modern Russia report […]
» Read more
“It was shocking,” said Mr. Pomerantsev, speaking over coffee in London last month. “They really saw television and news as a movie, and talked about it as a movie.”
» Read more
IMAGINE if you grew up lying. Not a little bit, for convenience, but during every public moment of your life: at school, at work, at social events. You had to lie to survive, because the punishment for telling the truth was the loss of your academic or professional career, or even prison. For Russians who came of age before 1991, […]
» Read more
The name “Vladimir Putin” is almost impossible to find in “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.” He usually appears only as “the President,” lording over and lurking behind the tales of tragedy and absurdity in Peter Pomerantsev’s captivating new book about modern Russia and its discontents. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/books/review/nothing-is-true-and-everything-is-possible-by-peter-pomerantsev.html?_r=0
» Read more
Anti-American sentiment and a nationalist fervor in Russia are rated higher today than at Cold War peaks – and at the heart of those twin developments is a master of propaganda, media control and mass audience appeal: Russian president Vladimir Putin. This year is the 30th anniversary of the launch of perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev – and the […]
» Read more
With its annexation of Crimea, aggression in the eastern Ukraine, and military and economic threats to NATO nations, the Kremlin has resumed a new kind of Cold War. Regardless of what Vladimir Putin may say, his motives are not benign. The West has reacted with surprise, confusion, paralysis, and mostly inaction. Epoch Times: Russia’s Weapon of Choice: Information Warfare. […]
» Read more
In Russia — a country that constitutes one-seventh of the world’s landmass, spans eight time zones and has a population of 143 million — television unites the nation. It is “the only force that can unify and rule and bind this country,” writes Russian-born British journalist Peter Pomerantsev. “It’s the central mechanism of a new type of authoritarianism, one far […]
» Read more
It would be hard to imagine Athenian generals worrying about the reporting of Spartan news or even, twenty-four centuries later, Douglas MacArthur caring much about media broadcasts from the land of the rising sun. But when General Philip Breedlove, the Supreme Commander of NATO, recently called on the West to make a greater effort to counter Russia’s toxic war of disinformation against […]
» Read more
The Kremlin’s international media operation appears to be going from strength to strength with two recent high-profile launches and more in the pipeline. But it is also coming under increased scrutiny over its lack of editorial balance and accusations that it is deliberately using disinformation to counter and divide the West. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30040363
» Read more
The Kremlin is committing huge resources to extending its influence through spin rather than soldiers. As the Ukraine crisis continues, IWPR editor Daniella Peled talks to writer and regional expert Peter Pomeranzev about how Russia is using the media as an extension of its military power. Russia is devoting great resources to the information war – how effective is this […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. March 24 (Interfax) – Russia has issued a universal broadcast license to CNN, press secretary of the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) Vadim Ampelonsky told Interfax. “An order to issue a universal broadcast license to CNN has been signed,” he noted. The newspaper Izvestia said earlier that CNN International […]
» Read more
[note from web editor: originally posted Aug. 26, 2014] DJ: On rare occasion “Russian lies” show up in a few of these sources but for the most part you are safe. All of these have appeared in JRL and have achieved a greater coherence of message than, say, Russia Direct or the Valdai Discussion Club. Apologies if your publication has […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – March 18, 2015) The Moscow Times and a minority stake in its sister publication Vedomosti are being sold to Demyan Kudryavtsev, former chief executive of major Russian publishing house Kommersant, news agency RBC reported citing an unidentified source. Kudryavtsev and Finnish media conglomerate Sanoma, the newspapers’ owner, had as of Tuesday signed a deal on […]
» Read more
(RIA Novosti – March 17, 2015) Russian state television’s heavily promoted drama-documentary about the annexation of Crimea, “Crimea: The Road to the Motherland”, attracted an audience share of 39.6 per cent of viewers aged 18 and over, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on 17 March, quoting data from market researchers TNS Gallup Media. The programme was shown on […]
» Read more
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – bne IntelliNews – March 13, 2015) Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s best known and most highly regarded investigative newspaper, may end its print issue this summer or even close down entirely, the newspaper’s editor said according to local reports. “It is perfectly possible that after celebrating Victory Day in May with a special edition we will […]
» Read more
March 11, 2015 … Ketchum has ended the bulk of its work for the Russian Federation in the US and Europe amid continuing tensions between the country and Western governments. The Omnicom Group firm represented the Kremlin through its hosting of the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year but also as its relationship with the West strained over the country’s […]
» Read more
IN LATE 2013, early in the Maidan demonstrations, Savik Shuster, one of Ukraine’s most influential television hosts, made the mistake of inviting opposition leaders onto his talk show. Mr Shuster’s network, whose owners were aligned with Viktor Yanukovych, then the president, promptly dropped Mr Shuster’s programme “Savik Live”. It was picked up by Channel 5, a station owned by a […]
» Read more
Subject: Are we like the frog? The responsibility of Western media Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 11:32:16 +0000 From: Antony Penaud <antonypenaud@yahoo.fr> Antony Penaud received his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2000. He is French and lives in London. His essays on the Ukrainian crisis can be found on https://www.scribd.com/AntonyKharms. Are we like the frog? The responsibility of Western […]
» Read more
(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Carl Schreck – February 25, 2015) Few global media outlets elicit such polarized opinions of its coverage as Russia’s state-funded television network RT, which the United States’ top diplomat has called a “propaganda bullhorn” for the Kremlin during the Ukraine crisis. Now, a group of graduate students at a leading U.S. journalism school are in the midst […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – February 18, 2015) U.S. cable news channel CNN has applied for a broadcast license from Russia’s state media watchdog, just one month after leaving the country following the introduction of a restrictive media advertising law. State media regulator Roskomnadzor received the application Tuesday and now has 30 days to consider it, news agency Interfax reported […]
» Read more
(Interfax – Moscow, February 9, 2015) The Dozhd television channel is resuming live broadcasts, which were temporarily suspended while the channel was in the process of moving to a new television studio. “From today, the Dozhd television channel is based at a new studio at the Flakon design centre. We have almost finished setting up the new studio, and in […]
» Read more
(opendemocracy.net – ZOYA KRAVCHUK – February 9, 2015) Zoya Kravchuk is a freelance journalist interested in international security, politics, human rights, and the media. She is currently based in Vienna. A Ukrainian journalist has been arrested for publishing a video calling on his fellow citizens to boycott mobilisation. He is being charged with treason and espionage. A court in the […]
» Read more