Komsomolskaya Pravda editor-in-chief Vladimir Sungorkin died at the age of 68. According to TASS sources, the cause of death was a stroke.
The Zvezda TV channel specifies that Sungorkin died on September 14 during a motor rally in Primorsky Krai.
Sungorkin had worked for Komsomolskaya Pravda since 1985, rising through the ranks from correspondent to editor-in-chief, which he became in 1997.
Back in 1992, he became executive director of Komsomolskaya Pravda. Shortly thereafter, journalists who disagreed with Komsomolskaya Pravda’s policies, including future Nobel laureate and editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov and editor-in-chief of VID TV Sergei Kushnerev, left Komsomolskaya.
“Komsomolskaya is said to be Vladimir Putin’s favorite newspaper. Sungorkin himself was Putin’s proxy in the presidential election of March 18, 2018, and was considered one of the closest media managers to the government.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, Sungorkin, along with the general directors of TASS and VGTRK, Sergei Mikhailov and Oleg Dobrodeyev, was put on the EU sanctions list for “misinformation and manipulation of facts.
“Vladimir Sungorkin distributes and legitimizes aggressive anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda of the Putin regime under the direct supervision of the Kremlin in one of the most popular media outlets in Russia,” the EU document stated.