Viewers of Venezuela's parliamentary TV channel to see programmes about small towns in Russia

In March 2024, the ANTV television channel of the National Assembly of Venezuela, the legislative body of the Republic, began showing a series of programmes about small towns in Russia. The episodes of the project "City of Stories" of TV BRICS, dubbed into Spanish, will be broadcast on Sundays for several months.

"ANTV is excited to tell its viewers about Russia, its identity and cultural richness. The ‘City of Stories’ programme will broaden Venezuelans' understanding of the country and help attract tourists to Russian regions"

Wendy Jaimes ANTV programme director

ANTV is part of the group of Latin American partners of TV BRICS. In February 2024, the Moscow City Duma joined the co-operation with the media network. Earlier TV BRICS assisted the parliamentary channel "Vmeste-RF" of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia in organising the broadcasting of the series "Not a Foreigner" on the air of its South African partner BRICS TV (Moja Media Group).

Anastasia Shishkalova, Head of International Projects at TV BRICS, explained that Latin American countries are now showing a high level of interest in programmes about Russia. Since March 2024, the "City of Stories" project has been broadcast on the YouTube channel owned by the Argentine media company AsiaTv. teleSUR, one of the largest broadcasters in the global South with a potential audience of 500 million people, will continue to show the series of programmes in April 2024. Viewers of teleSUR saw the first season in 2023.

The programme "City of Stories" was created by the international network TV BRICS. In 2022-2023, two seasons of the project were broadcast, totalling 26 episodes of 25 minutes each. The authors told about the most interesting small towns of Central Russia, located in the Vladimir, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Tver and Yaroslavl regions. Among them are ancient cities of the Golden Ring of Russia (Suzdal, Vladimir, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Yaroslavl, Kostroma) and the Moscow region (Sergiev Posad, Serpukhov, Kolomna).

The project is aimed at promoting the UN General Assembly Sustainable Development Goal No. 11 (to ensure openness, safety, resilience and environmental sustainability of cities and towns), which was supported at the XV BRICS Summit in Johannesburg.

"City of Stories" has been adapted into English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish. Earlier, media partners of TV BRICS showed the programme in China, South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina. In addition, diplomatic agencies and Russian cultural centres abroad, including the Russian Embassy in South Africa and the Russian House of Rossotrudnichestvo (The Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation) in Chennai (India), regularly post the project's episodes on their Internet platforms.