We’ve definitely noticed increased interest in the Russian internet market, marked notably by Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) acquisition of a contextual ad firm from Rambler and the planned IPO of Yandex,…

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Arsenal football club majority owner Alisher Usmanov is reportedly trying to add to his online investments by buying between 10 and 20 percent of Russia’s top portal Yandex. Business paper…

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WPP Group continues its steady pace of digital purchases in growing markets today by taking a majority stake in Russian interactive agency Alite Ltd. The company trades as Actis and…

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The first most people heard of Sup was when the upstart Moscow internet investment vehicle bought LiveJournal from SixApart in December (oh, and poached Annelies van den Belt from ITV.com).…

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Russia’s third-placed search and portal operator Rambler is to launch a major TV and movie site - described to me as a “Russian Hulu” - as the basis of its…

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Russian publisher GameLand is buying hockey portal AllHockey.ru from its founders for between $400,000 and $500,000, Russian business daily Kommersant reports (via Quintura). The site was founded by the pair…

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We have recently written about a flurry of Russian online deals, and this is among the bigger ones that have happened in the last year or so: Google has bought…

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Mobile news from our sister site mocoNews.net: -- Orange Launches Ad-Funded Mag: Orange has rolled out an ad-funded video magazine service on its portal Orange World. The clips—which includes celeb…

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With Russia’s internet scene really starting to hot up, and the former Soviet republics also showing a good degree of web promise, Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) has teamed with Russia’s Almaz…

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Russian news publisher Kommersant has acquired half of LiveJournal owner Sup in exchange for giving the blog operator control of its Gazeta.ru news portal. LiveJournal had integrated its features in…

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Vish Makhijani, the SVP and GM of Search at Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is joining Yandex, the number-one Russian search site, as the CEO of Yandex Labs, a new Silicon Valley…

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Russia’s largest search site, Yandex, has finalised a deal to buy the national road traffic information service SMIlink for an undisclosed amount. Seventy-employee SMIlink, started by VessoLink seven years ago,…

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Forticom, an Estonian company that runs major Lithuanian social net One.lT, has acquired a 70 percent stake in Russian Nasca-Klasa, for $90 million (PLN 200 million), reports Warsaw Business Journal,…

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Why did Movable Type maker Six Apart sell blog community LiveJournal in December, just three years after buying it? At the World Association of Newspapers congress in Gothenburg, the company’s…

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Marketing and comms group Aegis’ digital agency Isobar is buying Russia’s 76-employee AdWatch, which does online ad buying, planning and digital PR for clients like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Canon.…

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Ukrainian multi-media group United Media Holding (UMH) has floated 15 percent of the company in Frankfurt for $45 million, valuing it at $300 million, and plans to use the proceeds…

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Russian in-game advertising company EnterMedia has raised an estimated $1 million-plus from Mangrove and Russian financier ABRT. EnterMedia’s EgoSet technology places ads in both online and offline games in Russia,…

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If Yandex can mull a $2 billion IPO, so can Mail.ru: the Russian online portal Mail.ru is planning an IPO on London’s stock market which will value the business at…

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Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer will be hoping to avoid the kind of reception he received in Budapest, as he continues a whirlwind tour of central and eastern Europe.…

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Blog platform LiveJournal‘s new Russian owners are endeavouring to make the site more open by appointing some of their users to their advisory board. LiveJournal admits it stepped in it…

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Veteran blog host LiveJournal has joined the wave of social media sites trying to win larger audiences by opening a formal developer effort. Launched last night, LJ Labs will usher…

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The king is gone, long live… whom exactly? BBC future media and technology director Ashley Highfield’s move to Project Kangaroo opens up perhaps the most powerful position in UK digital…

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WiFi-sharing community Fon has raised a $9.5 million third round of funding to take the service to Russia and upgrade its product offering. Spain-based Fon, launched in February 2006, lets…

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Financial news channel CNBC is to target countries including Russia in a new effort to drive subscriptions for its premium CNBC Plus web video offering. The 15-month-old package offers streams…

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ITV (LSE: ITV) broadband MD Annelies Van Den Belt is leaving the broadcaster after 14 months to head Russian online media company Sup, which bought blog platform LiveJournal in December.…

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