About

The Bell was founded in 2017 by journalists Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Irina Malkova and Peter Mironenko as a news outlet independent from the Russian authorities, after its founders have been sacked as top editors at the largest Russian news website RBC because of pressure from the Kremlin.

Now, The Bell is a leading Russian independent economic news outlet. Our goal is to inform, educate and inspire global-minded Russian readers and to provide international readers with expertise on Russia-related issues. The Bell’s approach was inspired by the most innovative U.S. media outlets, such as Axios and Ǫuartz. In 2022, the Russian authorities designated both The Bell and its founders as ‘foreign agents’, and in 2023, they blocked access to our website in Russia.

In 2022, Bloomberg called The Bell one of the last Russian independent news sources still standing. We are read, cited and referred to by major international media, such as Reuters, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and many others. The subscribers of our English newsletter include members of the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament, top diplomats and academic researchers.

Our Authors

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Alexandra Prokopenko is one of Russia’s leading writers on this topic: independent economic analyst. Alexandra worked as an advisor at Russia’s Central Bank and Moscow’s Higher School of Economics from 2017 to 2022 — and before that she was an economic journalist for Vedomosti, then Russia’s leading business newspaper. Today, Alexandra works as a researcher at Center for East and European Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting fellow a the Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations. She holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Manchester.

Alexander Kolyandr is a financial analyst, a non-resident senior scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a former Vice President of Credit Suisse, and a former reporter at The Wall Street Journal and BBC.

The Bell publications are frequently cited by major Western media outlets

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“The Bell, originally a twice-daily business news digest, has gone into wire-service mode to cover developments surrounding what it carefully calls the “military operation”...”

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“Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has ordered some of the country's major internet companies to give it continuous access to their systems, The Bell investigative website reported late on Tuesday...”

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“The most popular destinations are Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Israel, which account for about half of all Russian exiles, according to research by The Bell, an independent Russian website”.

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“Almost a day of lack of information about the accident at a nuclear facility and the need to monitor the Norwegian reports about radiation should have forced those who remember Chernobyl to wince, wrote news website The Bell...”

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“...the protests against Mr. Navalny’s imprisonment also seem to be driving support for independent media, a phenomenon that The Bell, another of the new independent websites, christened “the Navalny Effect”.

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“Das unabhängige Internetportal “The Bell” hat versucht, aus den Statistiken anderer Länder die Größenordnung des Exodus zu ermitteln: Seit Beginn des Kriegs sind mindestens 650.000 Russen ins Ausland gezogen”.

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“Russian defense contractors are struggling to source workers as men are conscripted to the military, The Bell reported. About 160,000 positions at defense firms remain unfilled...”

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“I am categorically against Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine”, Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh told The Bell, adding he had friends and family in Ukraine and was “horrified”...”

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“Independent Russian news outlet The Bell said on June 29 that 'the overheating of the Russian economy is now an accepted fact' among top officials, including Central Bank head Nabiullina...”

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“Derrière ce récit soigneusement préparé, la réalité est bien moins rose. Le chômage est tombé à 2,6% grâce à l'effort de guerre. The Bell signale un manque de 160 000 spécialistes dans le secteur de la défense”.

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“In September Yandex said it intends to acquire TCS for $5.5bn, which made both companies gain over $2bn in value. The decision follows reports by The Bell...”

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