Monthly record
Seen From Moscow
How Russian media name, quote and interview Europe’s politicians, month by month.
Explore Seen From Moscow →Vigeat Europa|The Hague
The Russian press,on the record.
Vigeat Europa collects, archives and analyses what the Russian press tells Russians and the world,
building a definitive account of its coverage and how it changes over time.
A media analysis practice in The Hague.
What it does
The record of the Russian press
Vigeat Europa collects from more than 50 Russian outlets, in their original languages: the state-owned and state-aligned press inside Russia, the services that carry Moscow’s message abroad, the Russian press now publishing from exile, and the Telegram channels of the military bloggers and nationalist commentators at the heart of Russia’s wartime information space.
Rather than capturing articles by keyword or topic, Vigeat Europa sets out to capture everything these outlets publish. Where possible, the collection is checked every night against each outlet’s own records. Missing articles are identified and, where still online, recovered and marked as such. More than 8 in 10 articles collected live are captured within an hour of publication, and more than 9 in 10 within two hours. Each article is stored with its capture time and a cryptographic fingerprint of its text, timestamped within the hour by independent services. The fingerprint makes subsequent alterations to the archived text detectable when checked against the timestamped record. Changes made by a publication and discovered after capture are recorded.
Vigeat Europa builds and maintains its own collection rather than relying on third-party media feeds or archives. This gives the research a consistent, independently maintained body of source material to draw on. No Russian company or publication is paid for access.
Findings
What the record shows
Selected findings
Snapshot study|Sep 2026
2 in 3
times the Russian press gave a reason for calling someone a Nazi, it was that they were fighting Russia or siding against it – and almost always that alone.
What makes a Nazi?
5,905 uses · 25 state and state-aligned outlets and 4 official sites · 24 May–23 Sep 2026
Full study coming soon
Snapshot study|Sep 2026
7 in 10
election stories in the Russian state and state-aligned press named no political party at all.
Reporting an election campaign in Russia
3,577 stories · 25 state and state-aligned outlets · 1–17 Sep 2026
Full study coming soon
Snapshot study|Jul 2026
1 in 7
Russian reports of fuel shortages at the pump connected them to the war. Reports of the refinery strikes named the Ukrainian drones 99 times in 100.
Unplanned repairs
3,748 reports from the pump · domestic state and state-aligned press · 20 Jun–8 Jul 2026
Full study coming soon
Snapshot study|Jun 2026
0 of 67
state-press articles reporting the EU’s sanctions on 15 people over Alexei Navalny’s persecution printed his name. All 7 exile-press articles did.
EU sanctions in the Russian media
67 state-press articles from 19 outlets · 7 exile-press articles · 15 June listings, June 2026
Full study coming soon
The article-level evidence behind each of these studies is available on request.
Blog
From the founder
Vigeat Monitor
The founder’s column on what the Russian press tells its readers.
Read on Substack →Work
Working with Vigeat Europa
Vigeat Europa works with governments, international organisations and companies on:
- Regular reports – how the Russian press covers your country, sector or organisation, at an agreed interval.
- Monitoring a subject – a subject followed across every outlet, with a regular account of how its coverage and messaging shift over time.
- One-off questions – a specific question answered: how often, by whom, when and in what words.
- Data and analysis – structured data on coverage, by outlet, date and theme, for your own analysts.
- The evidence behind a finding – the archived text, its fingerprint and its timestamp proof.
If this could help your work, please get in touch at info@vigeat.eu. Public-interest and non-profit enquiries are welcome.
Vigeat Europa also keeps archives of the press in the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
| Outlet, time, fingerprint | Headline |
|---|---|
| TASS08:20 · captured +30 mine14b8a06…03741 | Депутат Бородай: Макрон и Мерц намерены передать преемникам курс на русофобиюDeputy Borodai: Macron and Merz intend to hand their successors a course of Russophobia |
| RIA Novosti08:33 · captured +16 mina77c56de…486e3 | Вчерашнее заявление Мерца об Украине вызвало возмущение в ГерманииMerz’s statement on Ukraine yesterday caused outrage in Germany |
| Moskovsky Komsomolets09:19 · captured +30 min2afe50a1…25a89 | Германия против: Мерц снова раздает деньги немцевGermany against: Merz is giving away Germans’ money again |
| Argumenty i Fakty09:38 · captured +11 mindd2dd2de…70219 | Заявление Мерца об Украине вызвало возмущение в ГерманииMerz’s statement on Ukraine caused outrage in Germany |
| Lenta.ru09:44 · captured +5 minafe0260d…fa445 | В Германии возмутились заявлением Мерца о помощи УкраинеOutrage in Germany at Merz’s statement on aid to Ukraine |
Method
Leading principles
Vigeat Europa sets out to capture everything published by the outlets it studies, in their original languages, and checks every night what it holds against the outlets’ own records. Missing articles are listed and, where still available, recovered; an outlet whose own record cannot be checked is named as unmeasured. The analysis starts from what was published, not from a selection of it.
What it collects
Each article’s text is fingerprinted when it is collected, and the fingerprints are timestamped by independent services – within the hour on the Bitcoin blockchain, and again each day by a separate timestamp authority. Anyone can check that an archived text existed at that time and has not been changed since, including by Vigeat Europa. A further copy is held in a write-locked archive for ten years. When an outlet changes an article after capture and we see it, the record keeps both versions.
Where a study turns on how a story was reported, the state press is analysed against the Russian press in exile, collected over the same days, as a control. That is how a pattern is told apart from the way news is simply reported.
- A written rule fixes what belongs in a study before any article is analysed.
- Machines do the first reading, at a scale no person could. Coding briefs are tested for consistency on unseen articles before use, and a second, independent coding pass checks the first.
- Every published figure is recomputed from the underlying article-level records. A person reviews the evidence behind each principal finding, including the source articles quoted.
- Where checks reveal problems, the analysis is corrected and rerun. Every error is logged, with its cause and the fix that prevents it happening again.
Errors are corrected in public, with the date and what changed.
Updates
Updates from Vigeat Europa, by email
New research and each month’s Seen From Moscow update, along with the founder’s column on what the Russian press tells its readers.
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