MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russia cannot work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as the United States, Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency Director General Dmitry Kiselev said Tuesday.
"I can say that we are not able to [work with NGOs] as sophisticatedly as the Americans. But first and foremost, we are learning," Kiselev said at the eighth Forum of European and Asian Media (FEAM) in Moscow.
Kiselev added that Russia had formerly not been able to create content for international media, "but now we are."
Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan concurred, attributing the lag between post-Soviet civil society and Western media and NGO structures to a variety of reasons.
"There was a time when it was considered unnecessary, there were periods when there was no money or no capabilities, but the result is here," Simonyan stressed.
The eighth FEAM plenary session organized by Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency brought together chief editors and top managers from 14 post-Soviet countries to discuss mass media interaction under various political and economic conditions.
Established in 2006, FEAM provides a unique platform for leading media experts from CIS countries, the Baltics and Georgia to discuss trends and developments in media.
