Vladimir Sungorkin, editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda, dies

According to the Rise publication, citing Alexander Gromov, deputy editor of the political department, Sungorkin died in Primorsky Krai during a business trip, during which he collected material for a book about the pioneer of the Far East, Vladimir Arsenyev.

- He was on a business trip. He was very cheerful. It happened there. We don't really know ourselves. For us, this is a shock. The man was very lively, motor. It was a work trip. He wasn't sick, he wasn't in the hospital. It just happened,” Gromov said.

The business trip of the editor-in-chief of the "KP" was supposed to last until September 16. The media cites the cause of death as a stroke.

Sungorkin began to engage in politics in 1976; he began his career as a war correspondent at KP in the construction zone of the Baikal-Amur Railway. In 2003, Sungorkin entered the TOP-5 most influential media managers in the country according to the magazine "Career". In 2018, he became an Honored Journalist of the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that Sungorkin has been continuously working in the publication since 1985, and after privatization for a long time was its owner. The publication was one of the most widely circulated in the world, at its peak it was claimed to distribute more than 35 million copies a day. He positioned KP as the favorite newspaper of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. During the presidency of Vladimir Putin, the publication almost always supported the course of the Kremlin, allowing itself to criticize only individual officials. Komsomolskaya Pravda's website is the most visited in the media category in Russia; according to Liveinternet, it is visited by 65 million users per month.

Vladimir Sungorkin was born in Khabarovsk, studied at the Faculty of Journalism. Before "KP" he worked in the newspaper "Soviet Russia". Sungonkin created the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station and tried to launch a TV channel. Spending on the latter turned out to be unsuccessful, and in 2017 he sold the publication to billionaire Grigory Beryozkin, who is close to the Kremlin.

The editors of Novye Izvestia express their condolences on the death of Vladimir Sungorkin.