MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. Russia’s TASS news agency is marking its 119th anniversary on Friday, planning to expand its network of its offices in Russia and abroad in the near future.

"The core mission of TASS - to provide a professional and unbiased coverage of events in Russia and abroad - has remained unchanged over these 119 years. And TASS is coping perfectly well with this task," the agency’s Director General Andrey Kondrashov said.

"Thanks to the topmost professionalism of the TASS team, their loyalty to moral and ethical principles, the agency’s reports remain a reliable source of information for millions of people worldwide," he continued.

The TASS director general added that the agency would prioritize "the development and improvement of its network of news offices in the country and abroad," viewing it as its "main competitive advantage."

More news offices abroad

TASS plans to expand the network of its offices abroad and enhance its presence in Africa’s information space by opening bureaus in Kenya, Tunisia and Zimbabwe in addition to the already functioning offices in Egypt, Morocco and South Africa.

Within the framework of the Second Russia-Africa Media Forum, organized by TASS and held in St. Petersburg on July 27-28, the agency signed memorandums of cooperation with six leading news agencies from Congo, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Algeria. Similar documents are being prepared for signing with other African nations, including Guinea and Ivory Coast.

Regional news centers in Russia

Another priority for TASS is providing comprehensive coverage of events in Russian regions and supporting local media in the form of visiting seminars, workshops and tutorials for regional journalists.

To that end, TASS plans to set up more Regional Information Centers (RIC) in administrative centers of Russia’s federal districts. The Regional Information Center in Rostov-on-Don, tasked with extensive coverage of news and events in Russia’s south, is about to join its counterparts from St. Petersburg (the administrative center of the Northwestern Federal District), Yekaterinburg (the Urals Federal District) and Novosibirsk (the Siberian Federal District).

Over the spring and summer of 2023, TASS opened bureaus in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson.

TASS in space

TASS will continue to publish news, photos and videos from space, namely from its own office aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which opened in 2021 as part of the agency’s cooperation with Russian state-run space corporation Roscosmos.

On November 17, 2021, TASS and Roscosmos signed a memorandum of cooperation, according to which the agency opened an office on the ISS. Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin was the first TASS special correspondent in space. His flight lasted 12 days. Oleg Artemyev took over as the agency’s second special correspondent. The current contributor to the TASS news feed from the orbital outpost is Dmitry Petelin, who will be joined by Oleg Kononenko, a deputy head at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and commander of the Roscosmos Cosmonaut Unit, when he arrives at the ISS in September.

About the agency

The history of Russia’s state news agency TASS begins on September 1, 1904, which was the first working day of the St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency (SPTA). Every day, TASS publishes around 3,000 news items and some 700 photos and videos from its correspondents in Russia and abroad.

The agency’s Regional Information Centers in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg, as well as dozens of bureaus in Russian regions and 56 offices in 51 foreign countries, allow it to promptly receive and publish objective information about events in Russia and worldwide.

The agency offers to its subscribers 70 newswires and themed services in all official languages of the United Nations: English, Arab, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French.

Over the past eight months of 2023, the audience of the agency’s website - tass.ru - exceeded 95.4 million users. The website is viewed by over 17 million unique visitors per month.

The media database of TASS contains 43 million content units in the form of contemporary photos and videos from TASS correspondents in Russia and abroad, infographics and archive photos dating as early as late 19th century, along with content contributed by the agency’s domestic and foreign partners.

Besides, TASS hosts over 1,500 media events every year.