The Moscow Times

History

Founding

Derk Sauer, a Dutch publisher who came to Moscow in 1989, made plans to turn his small, twice-weekly paper called the Moscow Guardian into a world-class daily newspaper. Sauer brought in Meg Bortin as its first editor in May 1992, and the team used a room at the Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel as its headquarters.

The Moscow Times was founded in 1992 by Sauer to reach US and European expats who had moved to Moscow after the fall of the USSR. He said: "It was a completely different time, there was no internet and there was a huge influx of Western expats who didn't speak Russian. At the time, they were the only ones with money in Moscow, so The Moscow Times was an interesting medium for advertisers".

The first edition of The Moscow Times was published in March 1992. It was the first Western daily to be published in Russia, and quickly became "a primary source of news and opinion" quoted in both Russia and the West.

It "played an important role by giving space to Russian commentators". For example, in the fall of 1993, it was able to play a role in defeating the censors, as stated by former editor-in-chief Meg Bortin in an New York Times op-ed:

From the mid-1990s until 2000, it was based in the old headquarters of Pravda. In 1997, the website moscowtimes.ru was registered.

Expansion

In 2003–2004, the newspaper added Jobs & Careers and Real Estate appendices, and in 2005 the Moscow Guide appendix, featuring high culture. The annual Moscow Dining Guide was also launched in 2005.

Until 2005, the paper was owned by Independent Media, a Moscow-registered publishing house that also prints a Russian-language daily newspaper, Vedomosti, The St. Petersburg Times (The Moscow Times' counterpart in Saint Petersburg) and Russian-language versions of popular glossy magazines such as FHM, Men's Health and Cosmopolitan Russia. That year, Independent Media was acquired by the Finnish publishing group Sanoma at an enterprise value of €142 million.

In 2006, the paper began its alliance with the International Herald Tribune, while 2009 saw the launch of the themoscowtimes.com website.

In 2009, it published Russia for Beginners: A Foreigner's Guide to Russia, written by foreign authors who offer advice based on their own experiences of living in Russia. The paper celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2012 with a gala dinner at the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel in Moscow.

In 2010, The Moscow Times began to publish in colour and launched the Travel Guide and Bar Guide projects.

After 2014

In January 2014, malicious ads on the newspaper's website redirected visitors to an exploit kit landing page. In December 2014, The Moscow Times was forced offline for two days by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. It was forced offline a second time in February 2015 for unknown reasons.

In April 2014 longtime editor-in-chief Andrew McChesney stepped down and was replaced by Nabi Abdullaev, a former Moscow Times reporter, news editor, managing editor, and deputy editor-in-chief who had left in 2011 to head RIA Novosti's foreign-language news service. Shortly after his appointment, Abdullaev argued in The Guardian that the west's "biased journalism ...robs the west of its moral authority". In Autumn 2015 Abdullaev was removed from his post and replaced by Mikhail Fishman, former head of Russky Newsweek.

In October 2014 The Moscow Times made the decision to temporarily suspend online comments after an increase in abusive and excessive pro-Russian trolling. The paper said it disabled comments for two reasons—it was an inconvenience for its readers as well as being a legal liability, because under Russian law websites are liable for all content, including user-generated content like comments.

In 2014, sister publication The St. Petersburg Times ceased publication. In 2015, Sanoma sold MoscowTimes LLC to , a former director of Kommersant. In 2017, the paper version stopped. The final paper edition appeared on 6 July. In July 2017 the operation of the paper changed to Stichting 2 Oktober, a foundation based in the Netherlands.

The Moscow Times currently belongs to a limited liability company which is 51% owned by Russian businessman Vladimir Jao, the CEO of an airline catering company, 30% by Svetlana Korshunova (), general director of the paper, and 19% by Derk Sauer, the original founder of the paper. Speaking to Kommersant, Derk Sauer explained that this is merely to comply with a Russian law which prohibits foreigners from controlling more than 20% of any Russia-based media company, since Sauer is a Dutch citizen. He further said that Vladimir Jao is an old friend of his, and "he does not control the publication, he is a partner".

In March 2020, the online newspaper launched a Russian language edition.

Following the passage of a law restricting coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, the newspaper moved its main editors to Amsterdam. On 15 April, Roskomnadzor blocked access to the Russian-language website of The Moscow Times in Russia after it had published what authorities called a false report on Russian riot police officers refusing to participate in the invasion. To make the website available within Russia despite blocks, it registered a range of domain names, sending links to the next current domain to readers via Telegram when one is blocked.

On 17 March 2023, The Moscow Times said it has been designated a foreign agent by Russia's justice ministry, which accused The Moscow Times of spreading inaccurate information about authorities' decisions, thereby forming a negative image of Russia. The Moscow Times said that the foreign agent legislation had been "disproportionately used”.

On 10 July 2024, the Prosecutor General of Russia declared The Moscow Times an undesirable organization. This designation practically bans the Times from operating in Russia, as anyone working for them or interacting with them (such as by agreeing to be interviewed) could potentially be prosecuted and sent to jail.

On December 17, 2025, the Russian-language domain moscowtimes.ru was extrajudicially seized by Roskomnadzor, leading the editorial team to move its operations to the ru.themoscowtimes.com subdomain.

Separate publications and special projects

Inter-country annexes The Moscow Times: Russia–France, Russia–Finland, Russia–UK, etc. These editions are dedicated to bilateral issues of cooperation and promote establishing of business and investment programs of interaction between two countries. They focus on economic, trade, investment, inter-culture project, and tourism issues.

Real Estate Catalog and Real Estate Quarterly: regular specialized business editions about the real estate market.

The Moscow Times Conferences was a meeting place for Russian and foreign investors, businessmen and experts in Russia and abroad. In the second half of 2017, the Conferences were transferred to the Vedomosti–Practice brand.

Notable employees

• Anders Åslund
• Ellen Barry
• Alexander Baunov
• Michael Bohm
• Irina Borogan
• John Chryssavgis
• William Harrison Courtney
• Alexander Etkind
• Mikhail Fishman
• Eva Hartog
• Igor Ivanov
• Radhika Jones
• Andrey Kolesnikov
• Alexey Kovalev
• Marko Mihkelson
• Ivan Nechepurenko
• Derk Sauer
• Anton Shekhovtsov
• Andrei Soldatov
• Konstantin Sonin
• Matt Taibbi
• Andrey Zubov

Citations

General and cited references

References

1. (30 November 2022). "The Moscow Times – 30 years".
2. Губский, Александр. (28 December 2022). "Благодарственное письмо издателя The Moscow Times".
3. Hobson, Peter. (30 April 2015). "Russian Businessman Buys The Moscow Times".
4. Luhn, Alec. (6 November 2015). "Russia's last independent English newspaper ends daily edition". [[The Guardian]].
5. Richardson, Dan. (2001). ''The Rough Guide to Moscow.'' Rough Guides. p. 56. {{ISBN. 978-1-85828-700-3.
6. (18 November 2023). "Russia designates The Moscow Times newspaper a 'foreign agent'". Reuters.
7. [https://meduza.io/news/2024/07/10/genprokuratura-rf-ob-yavila-izdanie-the-moscow-times-nezhelatelnoy-organizatsiey Генпрокуратура РФ объявила издание The Moscow Times «нежелательной» организацией]
8. Luhn, Alec. (5 February 2015). "Hackers target Russian newspaper site accused of being anti-Putin". [[The Guardian]].
9. Kuper, Simon. (10 October 2005). "Russian remodelling of a cosmopolitan theme". [[Financial Times]].
10. Bortin, Meg. (6 October 2012). "To Moscow With News". The New York Times.
11. Cohen, Mischa. (7 June 2017). "De terugkeer van Derk Sauer in de Russische media".
12. Sauer, Derk. (2012). "Derk Sauer: "20 Years Later"". The Moscow Times.
13. Lawton, Anna. (2004). ''Imaging Russia 2000: Film and Facts''. New Academia Publishing, LLC. p. 107. {{ISBN. 978-0-9744934-3-5.
14. Schreck, Carl. (14 February 2006). "Fire Tears Through the Pravda Complex".
15. (6 October 2010). "The Moscow Times: 18 Years".
16. "SanomaWSOY acquires the leading Russian magazine publisher Independent Media – Sanoma Group".
17. "Finland's Sanoma sells stake in Russian financial paper Vedomosti {{!}} Financial Times".
18. (3 March 2009). "Russia for Beginners: A Foreigner's Guide to Russia". The Moscow Times.
19. (2012). "20 years with The Moscow Times". The Moscow Times.
20. Jérôme Segura. (7 January 2014). "Hard times on The Moscow Times". [[Malwarebytes]].
21. (14 April 2014). "Nabi Abdullaev to Replace Andrew McChesney as MT Editor". The Moscow Times.
22. Nabi Abdullaev. (4 August 2014). "Is western media coverage of the Ukraine crisis anti-Russian?". The Guardian.
23. (5 November 2015). "'The Moscow Times' hires a new chief editor".
24. Collison, Chris. "Russia's Information War: Old Strategies, New Tools".
25. (31 October 2014). "Russian English-language newspaper The Moscow Times becomes latest victim in Kremlin info war". [[Ukraine Today]].
26. (22 December 2014). "St. Pete's main English-language newspaper suspends operation". Russia Beyond The Headlines.
27. Andrew Roth. (30 April 2015). "New Owner for The Moscow Times and Vedomosti". The New York Times.
28. Hobson, Peter. (4 May 2015). "Russian Owner Wants Modernized Moscow Times, Not Kremlin Stooge". The Moscow Times.
29. (16 June 2015). "Russia blocks sale of Russian Cosmopolitan, Esquire". The Moscow Times.
30. (5 July 2017). "The Moscow Times Closes Print Edition". The Moscow Times.
31. Ведомости. (7 June 2017). "Дерк Сауэр вернется в The Moscow Times".
32. (7 June 2017). "De terugkeer van Derk Sauer in de Russische media - Vrij Nederland".
33. Afanasyeva, Anna. (11 October 2017). "The Moscow Times подпитали акционером".
34. (11 October 2017). "The Moscow Times' new majority owner is a Russian catering company executive".
35. "The Moscow Times подпитали акционером".
36. (23 March 2020). "A Letter to Our Readers". The Moscow Times.
37. (9 March 2022). "Moscow Times moves to Amsterdam in response to Russian media law".
38. (7 March 2022). "Moscow Times relocating to Netherlands as Russia tightens media restrictions".
39. (15 April 2022). "Moscow Times' Russian Service Blocked Over War Coverage".
40. (15 April 2022). "Russia Blocks Websites Of The Moscow Times, Radio France International Over Ukraine War Coverage".
41. (26 November 2022). "The Moscow Times, krant in ballingschap: 'Onze grootste taak is het Russische publiek te laten zien hoe gevaarlijk de oorlog is'". Het Parool.
42. (7 October 2024). "Генпрокуратура РФ объявила издание The Moscow Times "нежелательной" организацией". Meduza.
43. Ilyushina, Mary. (10 July 2024). "Russia deems Moscow Times 'undesirable,' putting writers, sources at risk".
44. The Moscow Times. (December 17, 2025). "Roskomnadzor Seizes Domains Including moscowtimes.ru Without Court Order". [[The Moscow Times]].
45. (15 May 2020). "Кудрявцев прокомментировал расследование о связях владельцев "Ведомостей" с "Роснефтью"".
46. "Встреча с Михаилом Фишманом, главным редактором".
47. (29 March 2022). "Eva Hartog vertrok uit Rusland, maar hoopt snel terug te keren / Villamedia".