On 9 December 2013, by a decree of Vladimir Putin, it was liquidated and its assets and workforce were transferred to the newly created Rossiya Segodnya agency.

[3] On 10 November 2014, Rossiya Segodnya launched the Sputnik multimedia platform as the international replacement of RIA Novosti and Voice of Russia.

Within Russia itself, however, Rossiya Segodnya continues to operate its Russian language news service under the name RIA Novosti with its ria.ru website.

The agency published news and analyses of social-political, economic, scientific and financial subjects on the Internet and via e-mail in the main European languages, as well as in Persian, Japanese and Arabic.

[9] RIA Novosti's history dates back to 24 June 1941, when by a resolution of the USSR Council of People's Commissars and the Communist Party Central Committee, "On the Establishment and Tasks of the Soviet Information Bureau", the state-run Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformburo) was set up under the USSR Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee.

[4] The bureau's main task was to compile reports on the situation on the frontline of the war, work on the home front, and the partisan movement for the radio, newspapers and magazines.

The conference of representatives of Soviet public organizations adopted a decision to create a press agency named Novosti.

The APN heads included Boris Burkov (1961–70), Ivan Udaltsov (1970–75), Lev Tolkunov (1975–83), Pavel Naumov (1983–86), Valentin Falin (1986–88), Albert Vlasov (1988–90).

By a Presidential decree of the Russian president dated 22 August 1991, RIA Novosti was placed within the competence of the Press and Information Ministry.

By a decree of the Russian president, "On Improving the Work of the State Electronic Media", the VGTRK information holding was created in May 1998, which RIA Novosti joined.

[4] In 2005, RIA Novosti launched RT (originally Russia Today), a global multilingual television news network, which is a government-funded but autonomous non-profit organization.

"[11] On 9 December 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the liquidation of RIA Novosti "On some measures to improve the effectiveness of the state mass media"[12] and merging it with the international radio service Voice of Russia to create Rossiya Segodnya.

[22][23] In the article, author Petr Akopov condemned "Anglo-Saxons who rule the West" for allegedly attempting to "steal Russian lands", described the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union as a "terrible catastrophe", and asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin's launch of the invasion resolved the "Ukrainian question" to establish a "new world order" with "Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole" against the remainder of Europe.

[22][24][25][26] The article was promptly removed by RIA Novosti, but not before it was republished by the state-owned news agency Sputnik and translated by the Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post into English under the title "The new world order".