Russia’s Digital Development Ministry spent 39.5 billion rubles in 2025 to develop a “national video platform” and another four billion rubles to create and develop a “multifunctional information exchange service,” the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing an appendix to the law on the execution of the federal budget for the year.

VK is the company behind the national video platform project, a source familiar with the government’s plans told the newspaper. “The subsidies were channeled to VK’s legal entity for the development of ‘VK Video,’” the source said. A second source confirmed the money went toward developing VK Video. A source in the media industry added that the push to designate VK Video as the national video platform is intended to raise the service’s profile relative to its competitors.

The document Kommersant reviewed contained no details about the second line item — the “multifunctional information exchange service.” A federal law on the creation of such a service took effect in Russia in June 2025, stipulating that the service would be established by an organization designated by the government. That organization was later identified as a company called Kommunikatsionnaya Platforma (Communications Platform), which was renamed “MAKS” — written in Cyrillic — in January 2026. Its founders are VK and Kompaniya VK.

The 2025 funds allocated by the Digital Development Ministry went to an investment company called Yedinoe Video (Unified Video), Kommersant reported. The company’s listed general director is Andrei Borodin, who previously headed FGBU TsEKI, an organization under the Digital Development Ministry.

VK’s 2025 financial reporting states that the company entered into a binding corporate agreement to establish a joint venture for the development of a video platform, which includes Yedinoe Video among its participants. A Kommersant source said this refers to VK’s video platform, which was spun off into a separate joint venture with state participation.

Experts who spoke to Kommersant said “national” status gives a business guaranteed access in the event of internet restrictions, mandatory pre-installation on devices, and integration with the Gosuslugi government services portal.

VK announced the official launch of the VK Video platform in September 2023; the service had been operating in test mode since the fall of 2021. The company later moved aggressively to recruit popular bloggers and content creators to the platform. Around the same time, the possible blocking of YouTube was being discussed — YouTube was eventually “slowed” to the point of near-total inaccessibility about a year later — and VK Video was seen as YouTube’s potential replacement, the platform that authorities envisioned as its successor.