The first publisher of the project was the deputy CEO of Rossiyskaya Gazeta Eugene Abov.

The look and feel of the English edition was also refreshed substantially, removing all things regarded as distracting on screen when reading a story or watching a video.

[7] In 2007 and 2014, former Slate journalist Jack Shafer and The Guardian commentator Roy Greenslade respectively accused Russia Beyond of being propaganda.

[8][9][10][11] In Europe, the media outlet paid London's Daily Telegraph, Le Figaro in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, and the Italian daily La Repubblica to be distributed as an insert to those publications, and in the United States it partnered with The Washington Post until 2015; The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were bundling the insert into their regular editions as of 2018.

The monthly Russia-themed supplement first appeared in The Daily Telegraph and the American Washington Post in 2007 under the name Russia Now.