RIA Novosti Roundup -- News Agency Liquidated; Freestyle Skiier Banned

RIA Novosti to Be Liquidated in State-Owned Media Overhaul

The Kremlin announced Monday the dissolution of RIA Novosti, the country’s major state-run news agency, amid a significant reorganization of state-owned media assets.

News agency RIA Novosti and the state-owned Voice of Russia radio will be scrapped and absorbed into a new media conglomerate called Rossiya Segodnya, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.

The move is the latest in a series of shifts in Russia’s news landscape, which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.

In a separate decree published Monday, the Kremlin appointed Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent Russian television presenter and media manager recently embroiled in a scandal over anti-gay remarks, to head Rossiya Segodnya.

Head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov said the changes were about saving money and making state media more effective.

"Russia has its own independent politics and strongly defends its national interests: it’s difficult to explain this to the world but we can do this, and we must do this," Ivanov told reporters.

The direct translation of Rossiya Segodnya is Russia Today, but the new body will apparently be separate from RT, the Kremlin-funded English-language television channel originally known as Russia Today.

RT head Margarita Simonyan told Russian news website Lenta.ru on Monday that she only found out about the decree from news reports.

The changes, including legislative amendments, must be carried out by the government within three months, according to the Kremlin. Rossiya Segodnya will be located in the current RIA Novosti building in downtown Moscow, the decree said.

RIA Novosti was set up in 1941, two days after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Information Bureau, and now has reporters in over 45 countries providing news in 14 languages.

Last month Gazprom-Media, which is closely linked to state-run gas giant Gazprom, bought control of Russian media company Profmedia from Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin. In October, Mikhail Lesin, a former Kremlin advisor, was appointed to head Gazprom-Media.

Russian Freestyle Skier Gets 2-Year Doping Ban

One of Russia’s most talented freestyle skiers has been banned for two years for breaking anti-doping rules, officials said Monday, with less than two months to go until the Winter Olympics.

Anna Orlovskaya, 18, was last year’s national champion in slopestyle and ski halfpipe, two events making their Olympic debut in Russia’s Black Sea city of Sochi in February.

She had also finished ninth in a World Cup slopestyle event in March and 13th in the same discipline at the world junior championships later that month.

In a statement announcing the ban, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency did not specify the nature of Orlovskaya’s offense, only that it was "a breach of anti-doping rules."

Orlovskaya’s ban is dated from November 19, 2013.

The 2013-2014 freestyle season began with two events in New Zealand in August, in which Orlovskaya did not compete, and started in full Friday with a slopestyle event in Canada, again without Orlovskaya.

Published by exclusive arrangement with Around the Rings’ Sochi 2014 media partner RIA-Novosti.

For general comments or questions,click here.

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics isAroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.