In August, VGTRK confirmed that Dmitry Kiselyov no longer hosts Vesti Nedeli. The programme he had fronted since 2012 was handed to State Duma deputy Yevgeny Popov, while Kiselyov himself was given an author’s show in a later slot. A polite demotion: the airtime remains, but the weight is no longer the same. This is how they remove people now.
Solovyov overplayed his sabre-rattling and lost his self-command altogether. Back on 10 January, on Solovyov Live, the host was musing about zones of influence. In his words, what is happening in Armenia is “far more painful” for Russia than what is happening in Venezuela. Then he asked: if a “special military operation” could be launched in Ukraine for the sake of security, why not launch one “in other points of our zone of influence” as well? And added: “to hell with international law.”
Armenia declined to treat this as rhetoric. The republic’s Foreign Ministry handed a note of protest to the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kopyrkin. Central Asia responded sharply too. On 15 January, Maria Zakharova explained that “there was no statement there, there was, as it were, a question.” Even Lavrov’s Foreign Ministry distanced itself from the state channel’s host, who by then was spouting outright drivel.
Immediately afterwards, Evening with Vladimir Solovyov vanished from the Rossiya 1 schedule for several days, with a TV series running in its slot. No official reasons were given, but according to our source, the host’s dismissal was stopped by the first deputy chief of the presidential administration, Alexei Gromov. Which means that in January the dismissal was already in the works — and one man cancelled it. That man is what Solovyov now hangs by.
In the spring, Solovyov widened the geography of his outbursts. On air, the host called Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni “fascist scum” and declared that “treachery is her middle name.” On 21 April, Italy’s foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador, Alexei Paramonov. Meloni replied that “the regime’s rabid propagandist” was in no position to give lessons in either consistency or freedom.
Vladislav Davankov, deputy speaker of the State Duma, demanded that Solovyov Live be stripped of state funding. The occasion was provided by the words of another of the channel’s hosts, Sergey Karnaukhov, about domestic violence. “It disgusts me that such people get a platform on a channel that lives off state funding,” Davankov wrote. He named no figures. But attacking Solovyov’s platform in public has become safe even for a system-loyal deputy.
Formally, everything is still in place for Solovyov too: the evening slot on Rossiya 1, a channel of his own, the orders. But in eight months of 2026 his words twice turned into diplomatic incidents. The ossified Foreign Ministry disowned his “question.” The country’s main economic forum did without him. A Duma deputy speaker proposed spending no budget money on his channel. And Kiselyov has already been moved aside. The January and April episodes speak for themselves — Solovyov is next, the moment he slips once more.
Solovyov has already been written off overboard — the ship simply has not yet slowed down to enter it in the logbook.
