Religious groups must provide the Russian public with better information about themselves and their activities, said Anatoly Krasikov, keynote speaker for Russia’s first Christian mass media summit.

Journalists, publishers and broadcasters representing Protestant and Russian Orthodox groups gathered in St. Petersburg last month. After three days of presentations and dialogue, participants decided to organize a Christian media network in order to increase awareness of religious concerns throughout Russia.

The Association of Christian Churches in Russia (ACCR) sponsored the event, which was attended by professionals from Russia, Europe, and North America. “The vision and desire of the summit is to strengthen those who earnestly serve the Lord,” the ACCR said in a news release. “We do not want to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and to compete with those who do something better than we do; rather our purpose is to support believers in order to achieve great results for God’s glory, while maintaining unity.”

Keynote speaker Krasikov is a former associate director of TASS, the main news agency of the former Soviet Union. Seventh-day Adventists participating in the summit included a magazine editor, a television broadcaster, and communication leaders from Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova.

Valery Ivanov, communication director for the Adventist Church in the Euro-Asia region, expressed enthusiasm for future cooperation with the interfaith group. “The spirit of the meetings was one of freedom, joy, and unity in spite of our different beliefs,” he said.

In a presentation at the summit, Ivanov urged Christian communicators to find ways of distributing their information in the mainstream media. Currently, all major television stations and most large newspapers in Russia are state-controlled, and minority religious groups receive little news coverage. Many groups have been asked to pay for the placement of legitimate news stories.

“At this time Russia and the nearby countries are hungry for good quality Christian programs,” Ivanov said. “Our church has much to offer people—about protecting and restoring health, about religious liberty, about freedom of conscience.”

“Television is filled with advertisements, crime films, and news about terrorism,” he said. “People need programs that give them hope for a hopeless economy, a hopeless environment, and a hopeless world.”