RIA Novosti

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 26th of February 2022, RIA Novosti published an article announcing that Russia had won the Russo-Ukrainian War. The piece was timestamped prematurely. The war had barely begun. The article declared that "Ukraine has returned to Russia" and described the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a "terrible catastrophe". It was removed quickly, but not before Sputnik republished it and a Pakistani newspaper ran an English translation under the title "The new world order". That accidental publication exposed something about RIA Novosti that decades of institutional history could not fully obscure: what happens when a news agency serves the state it covers? RIA Novosti's story spans more than eight decades, three political systems, and repeated reinventions. It began not as a news organization in any ordinary sense, but as a wartime propaganda bureau established the week after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. It survived Stalin, outlasted the Soviet Union itself, and was ultimately dissolved by Vladimir Putin in 2013. What exactly was this agency, how did it evolve, and what does its arc reveal about state media in modern Russia?

• 2. Born in Wartime

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  On the 24th of June 1941, two days after Germany launched its invasion of the USSR, a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars and the Communist Party Central Committee established the Soviet Information Bureau, known as Sovinformburo. Its first charge was narrow and urgent: compile reports on the frontline situation, the home front, and the partisan movement, and distribute them across radio, newspapers, and magazines. Between October and March of 1941-42, the bureau operated from Kuibyshev, the city now known as Samara, after evacuating from Moscow during the worst of the German advance. Sovinformburo's reach was vast. It coordinated information across 1,171 newspapers, 523 magazines, and 18 radio stations in 23 countries, channeling material through Soviet embassies, friendship societies, trade unions, and youth organizations. The bureau also directed a cluster of anti-fascist committees representing women, youth, scientists, and Slavic peoples. One of those committees, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was later liquidated on Stalin's orders in 1948; all of its members were killed. The heads of Sovinformburo during its life included A.S. Shcherbakov, S.A. Lozovsky, Y.S. Khavinson, and D.A. Polikarpov. In 1944, a dedicated bureau for foreign propaganda was added as a formal subdivision, signaling a shift from wartime information work toward something with a longer horizon.

• 3. The Novosti Era

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  On the 21st of February 1961, representatives of Soviet public organizations met to create a new press agency. The Novosti Press Agency, known by its Russian acronym APN, formally succeeded Sovinformburo that year. Its founding organizations were four: the USSR Journalists Union, the USSR Writers Union, the Union of Soviet Societies of Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Znaniye Society. The agency's charter stated its aim was to "contribute to mutual understanding, trust and friendship among peoples" by publishing accurate information about the USSR abroad and familiarizing Soviet readers with life in foreign countries. Its motto was "Information for Peace, for the Friendship of Nations". APN's footprint was global. It maintained bureaus in over 120 countries and published 60 illustrated newspapers and magazines in 45 languages, with a single-print circulation of 4.3 million copies. Its publishing house issued over 200 books and booklets annually, with a total print run reaching 20 million copies per year. Book series included titles such as ABC Political Science. APN also co-published the newspaper Moscow News with the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies; in September 1990, that newspaper became an independent publication. In 1989, a television center opened within APN. That operation was later transformed into the TV-Novosti company, which since 2005 has operated the RT media network. The agency was led in succession by Boris Burkov from 1961 to 1970, Ivan Udaltsov from 1970 to 1975, Lev Tolkunov from 1975 to 1983, Pavel Naumov from 1983 to 1986, Valentin Falin from 1986 to 1988, and Albert Vlasov from 1988 to 1990.

• 4. Soviet Twilight, Russian Dawn

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  On the 27th of July 1990, a decree by USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved APN and replaced it with the Information Agency Novosti, or IAN. The stated rationale pointed to democratizing the mass media while continuing to provide information support for Soviet domestic and foreign policies. A computer databank was created as part of the new agency; it initially held over 250,000 documents. In 1991, the agency launched an Infonews hotline. IAN maintained bureaus in 120 countries and published 13 illustrated magazines and newspapers. Chairman of the IAN Board was Albert Ivanovich Vlasov. The Soviet Union collapsed the same year, and the Russian Information Agency Novosti was created in September 1991 on the basis of IAN and the Russian Information Agency. A Presidential decree dated the 22nd of August 1991 placed RIA Novosti within the competence of the Press and Information Ministry. The agency held around 80 bureaus and offices abroad, with over 1,500 subscribers in CIS countries and roughly a hundred more in non-CIS countries. A further decree in September 1993 transformed RIA Novosti into a news-analytical agency. The following years brought rapid institutional change. A radio channel called RIA-Radio operated in 1996. In August 1997, the television channel Kultura was created from the RIA TV channel under the sponsorship of the VGTRK broadcasting company. By May 1998, the VGTRK information holding absorbed RIA Novosti, and the agency was renamed the Russian Information Agency Vesti. It reclaimed the RIA Novosti name on the 1st of April 2004, after its founding documents were formally updated. In 2005, RIA Novosti launched RT, originally called Russia Today, describing it as a government-funded but editorially independent non-profit. The agency stated it "merely participated in establishing the channel" and that RT retained "complete legal, editorial and operational independence".

• 5. Structure and Scale

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  RIA Novosti published news and analysis covering social-political, economic, scientific, and financial subjects. Distribution ran across the internet and by e-mail in major European languages, as well as in Persian, Japanese, and Arabic. Its correspondent network covered the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and more than 40 non-CIS countries. Its client list was a roster of the Russian state itself: the presidential administration, the government, the Federation Council, the State Duma, leading ministries, regional administrations, diplomatic missions, and foreign business representatives. The agency reported partial government subsidization, disclosing a figure of 2.7-2.9 billion roubles for 2013, while asserting full editorial independence. Under its charter, RIA Novosti was a federal unitary enterprise, meaning its property was federally owned and indivisible. The last editor-in-chief before the 2013 dissolution was Svetlana Mironyuk, the first woman ever appointed to lead the agency. Sports correspondent Vsevolod Kukushkin, who covered ice hockey and sports for 22 years, was among its notable journalists.

• 6. The 2013 Dissolution

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  On the 9th of December 2013, Vladimir Putin signed a decree titled "On some measures to improve the effectiveness of the state mass media", ordering the liquidation of RIA Novosti. The agency was merged with the international radio service Voice of Russia to form a new body called Rossiya Segodnya. Dmitry Kiselyov, a former anchorman on Channel One Russia, was appointed president of the new agency. The restructuring appeared to have been kept tightly secret. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, stated in an interview that she was completely unaware of the reorganization and only learned of it by listening to the competitor radio station Kommersant-FM. From March 2014, staff at RIA Novosti were offered the choice of transferring their contracts to Rossiya Segodnya or signing redundancy agreements. On the 8th of April 2014, RIA Novosti was formally registered by Roskomnadzor as a news agency and online newspaper, completing its absorption into the new structure. On the 10th of November 2014, Rossiya Segodnya launched a multimedia platform called Sputnik as the international replacement for both RIA Novosti and Voice of Russia. Within Russia, however, Rossiya Segodnya continued operating a Russian-language news service under the RIA Novosti name and at the ria.ru website. The name survived; the institution, in its prior form, did not.

• 7. Controversy and Sanctions

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  The premature victory article of February 2022 was not an isolated episode. On the 3rd of April 2022, RIA published a separate article titled "What Russia should do with Ukraine", which commentators condemned for expressing genocidal intent. In August 2022, Twitter blocked four RIA profiles across 27 countries, though not the main account; Twitter itself is banned inside Russia. On the 30th of July 2025, RIA published an article headlined "There is no other option: Don't let anyone remain alive in Ukraine". International responses followed. In February 2023, Canada added RIA Novosti to its sanctions list during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In May 2024, the European Union placed the agency on its sanctions list, accusing it of spreading propaganda. The reorganization that produced Rossiya Segodnya had already raised concerns in 2013 that RIA Novosti would become a propaganda outlet. The wartime publications of 2022 and 2025 supplied concrete evidence for those concerns. Meanwhile, the ria.ru domain continues to operate under the RIA Novosti name, still headquartered in Moscow, with Anna Gavrilova serving as chief editor.