President Vladimir Putin has destroyed RIA Novosti, Russia's largest news agency. With a single stroke, he has leveled a powerful brand that the government had spent about $1 billion developing over the past decade
Dmitry Kiselyov, who will oversee the liquidation of RIA Novosti and build a new state media empire in its place, is a notorious and bitter critic of the West, liberalism and the protest movement in Russia and Ukraine. By appointing Kiselyov as the new director of Rossia Sevodyna, the Kremlin has signaled a radical shift in its propaganda style: using the heavy ax of Kiselyov to replace the soft power of Mironyuk. The pro-Kremlin journalists Kiselyov will cultivate at Rossia Sevodnya will likely take on the same venomous anti-U.S., anti-gay and anti-liberal tone that is so prominent on Kiselyov's own news analysis program and talk shows on state-controlled Rossia 1 television. Kiselyov's media agency will whip up a new level of hysteria about the country being surrounded by enemies and anti-Russian U.S. conspiracies, which will be cynically presented as "news" and "analysis."
