Andrey Kondrashov, who until that moment was the first deputy general director of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, was appointed to the post.
The Prime Minister of Russia, Mikhail Mishustin, signed an order by which Sergey Mikhailov was released from the position of director general of the news agency of Russia – TASS, the press service of the Russian government reported, quoted by BTA.
Andrei Kondrashov, who until that moment was the first deputy general director of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, was appointed to the post.
The 52-year-old Mikhailov headed the country’s oldest news agency – TASS, since 2012. He was the chairman of the Council of Heads of State News Agencies of the CIS countries, vice president of the Organization of News Agencies of the Asia-Pacific region, and also the head of the media council of the Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia.
His successor Kondrashov was born in 1973 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at the Independent Environmental and Political Science University in Moscow. After that, he also graduated with a master’s degree in political science from the Russian Academy of National Economy and Civil Service.
Since 1991, he has been working as a television journalist. According to Reuters, Kondrashov is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2018, the new CEO served as press secretary in Putin’s campaign staff during his presidential campaign.
Next year, TASS will celebrate its 120th anniversary. It was established in 1904 as the St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency, the first official news agency in Russia. The name TASS is left over from the USSR era as the abbreviation stands for Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union.
Reuters notes that the Kremlin has tightened media controls since the start of the war in Ukraine, causing the closure of a number of independent newspapers and branding many journalists as “foreign spies”.
Illustrative Photo by Lubov Tandit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-walking-on-concrete-road-with-mid-rise-buildings-under-clouded-sky-92412/
