Sputnik was created by presidential decree. In December 2013 Vladimir Putin abolished the RIA Novosti news agency and the Voice of Russia radio service and replaced them with a new state company, Rossiya Segodnya, appointing the television anchor Dmitry Kiselyov as director-general. Rossiya Segodnya launched Sputnik on 10 November 2014 as a wire service, website network and radio operation aimed at audiences outside Russia, with Kiselyov describing the intended readership as people tired of what he called aggressive propaganda promoting a unipolar world. Putin had earlier framed the purpose as breaking the monopoly of Anglo-Saxon global information streams. This domain is the English-language flagship, sitting above a network of country editions in more than a dozen languages, including editions for India, Belarus, China, Uzbekistan, Serbia and Iran. Today, Sputnik is mainly focused on international news from a Russian standpoint, Russian foreign and defence policy, the war in Ukraine, multipolarity and BRICS, Global South coverage, and analysis and opinion, published in English for readers outside Russia, from their base in Moscow, Russia. One interesting fact: Sputnik's own about page dates the agency to 10 November 2014. The reference record gives its launch as 29 October 1929, inheriting the start date of the Soviet foreign radio service it descends from. An outlet eleven years old by one measure and ninety-six by the other.