Kommersant is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in Russia mostly about politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia certified July 2013 circulation of the daily was 120,000–130,000. It is owned by Alisher Usmanov. Kommersant was founded under the ownership of businessman and publicist Vladimir Yakovlev. The first issue was released in January 1990. The newspaper’s title is spelled in Russian with a terminal hard sign (ъ) – a letter that is silent at the end of a word in modern Russian and was thus largely abolished by the post-revolution Russian spelling reform, in reference to a pre-Soviet newspaper of the same name active between 1909 and 1917.
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This is played up in the Kommersant logo, which features a script hard sign at the end of somewhat more formal font. The newspaper also refers to itself or its redaction as “Ъ”.
Founded as a weekly newspaper, it became popular among business and political elites. It then became a daily newspaper in 1992. It was owned by the businessman Boris Berezovsky from 1999 until 2006, when he sold it to Badri Patarkatsishvili. In September 2006, it was sold to Alisher Usmanov.
In January 2005, Kommersant published a protest at a court ruling ordering it to publish a denial of a story about a crisis at Alfa-Bank.