Vesti (Israeli Newspaper)

Vesti was launched in 1992 by Yediot Aharonot, Israel's major Hebrew-language media group, in response to a large wave of Russian-speaking immigration to Israel.[1] The title translates from Russian as "News," and the paper targeted Russian-speaking readers from a medium-high socioeconomic background.[2]

The broader Russian-language media sector included more than 100 periodicals and broadcasting outlets serving Israelis who, though many could read Hebrew, preferred media in their native language.[1] The Library of Congress's Russian-newspaper title index records the paper under the combined title "Vesti / Nash dom Izrail'," with Israel listed as the place of publication.[7] The National Library of Israel catalogs the title as "Vesti – Вести," classifying it as an Israeli publication in the Middle East region, with online holdings running from June 1, 2014, through December 27, 2018.[8] The National Library also catalogs several related regional editions — including Vesti Ierusalim, Vesti Ierusalim i Iuzhnyĭ okrug, and Vesti Sharon — as distinct titles, though their precise relationship to the main newspaper is not documented in the catalog.[9]

At the height of its print run, Vesti held a commanding position in the Russian-Israeli media market. By 2009 it was described as the only remaining Russian-language daily newspaper in Israel, following the reduction or closure of competing papers.[3] It combined content from Yedioth Ahronoth with independent editorial material and international reporting, with particular emphasis on news from the countries of the former Soviet Union.[3] A media-sector executive quoted in a 2009 Globes report estimated that Vesti received more than a quarter of all advertising budgets directed at the Russian-speaking sector.[3]

Descriptions of its publication frequency vary. Globes called Vesti Israel's only remaining Russian-language daily in 2009, while a 2010 Sh'ma essay described it as a weekly; the sources do not establish whether its schedule changed.[3][5]

Subscriber figures were disputed even within the 2009 Globes account. Approximately 45,000 subscribers had been cited at one point, but estimates the article called more realistic put the figure at between 15,000 and 20,000.[3] Competing Russian-language weeklies such as Novosti Nedeli and Mig News each registered only a few percentage points in a 2008 Shiluv Institute survey of readership in the Russian-speaking sector, underscoring Vesti's relative dominance.[3]

Eduard Kuznetzov served at some point as editor of the newspaper, which was described in a 2012 report as "the largest Russian-language newspaper in Israel."[10] A December 2011 special New Year edition illustrated the scale of the paper's ambitions: it ran to 576 pages and included Sharm magazine — then marking its 15th anniversary — with a 404-page issue covering beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and home design.[11]

In a 2013 Jewish Review of Books essay, Walter Laqueur reported that Vesti's circulation had fallen to a third of its level during its "not-very-distant heyday," while noting that the decline formed part of a broader downturn in print media.[12]

The exact timeline of the transition to digital is reported differently across sources. A Ynet report published in November 2018 stated that a Vesti news website had launched that year and that distribution of the print newspaper had stopped.[2] A January 2020 Ynet report, however, gave 2017 as the year the website was established and said that print publication had ended nearly a year before that report was published.[4] By that point, the digital operation had grown substantially: the site attracted nearly 1.5 million unique visitors per month, had more than 100,000 Facebook followers, and drew over 81% of its readers from within Israel, with nearly 79% accessing it on mobile devices.[4] Content included original daily reporting on politics, the economy, health, culture, and fashion, alongside translations of articles from Ynet and other Yedioth Ahronoth Group publications.[4]

In 2024, Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich — who had previously served as CEO of Vesti and founded Israel Plus, a Russian-language Israeli news channel — was appointed CEO of Channel 13 News, showing one former Vesti executive's move into the broader Israeli media landscape.[13]

Vesti served as more than a news conduit for Russian-speaking immigrants; it functioned as a platform for cultural writing. In the late 1990s, writer Alexander Goldstein contributed weekly literary columns to the paper — essays later collected in the volume In Memory of Pathos — ranging across subjects as varied as V. S. Naipaul, contemporary Russian philosophy, Isaiah Berlin, and Bertolt Brecht.[5] These columns were notable for their intellectual seriousness in a publication aimed at a mass immigrant readership.

The paper also maintained a Yiddish-language section, edited by Shlomo Groman, a former activist of the Yiddish Farein.[6] This section placed Vesti among the leading Russian-language periodicals in Israel that devoted space to Yiddish culture, an effort scholars have characterized as part of a broader phenomenon of Zionist Yiddishism — connecting post-Soviet immigrants' integration into Israeli society with Jewish cultural continuity.[6] On June 22, 2021, Russia's ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Victorov, published an article in Vesti marking the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's attack on the USSR, an event cited by the Institute for National Security Studies in its analysis of Russia's use of World War II narratives in its relationship with Israel.[14]

In March 2022, Russia blocked access to the Vesti website for users within Russia.[15][16] The Russian media regulator decided on the block on February 24, 2022 — the day Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine — and implemented it on March 16.[16] The action formed part of wider restrictions on media outlets distributing information about Russian military operations that had not been approved by the authorities.[16] The Jerusalem Post and N12 identified Vesti as a Russian-language news website belonging to the Yedioth Ahronoth Group.[15][16]