Rambler&Co

Rambler&Co has been removed from the State Media Monitor dataset. Sber holds the wider Rambler Group, but the registered media companies sit in a separate structure: the last fully documented distribution, reported from corporate-register records in November 2020, placed slightly more than 80 per cent of the media operating company with OOO Medianna, owned by Sergei Shishkin, and a little less than 20 per cent with the Sber-controlled head company, an arrangement adopted because Russian media law limits foreign ownership of a media founder, and non-resident entities then held more than 40 per cent of Sber’s capital. State Media Monitor could not confirm that this remains the position in 2026, or obtain any shareholder agreement, voting arrangement or management contract identifying who currently exercises editorial control, so neither the majority state ownership required for Captured Public nor the demonstrated control by a state-linked actor required for Captured Private is established.

The removal does not indicate improved editorial independence: the 2014 dismissal of Lenta.ru’s editor-in-chief and the censorship its journalists described in 2022 remain on the record. The classification will be reconsidered on obtaining current corporate extracts for the media publishers and evidence identifying the actor directing their editorial decisions.

August 2026