Annotated: A Russian news article

Russian news writing has a recognizable grammar. It leans on participial phrases to pack information densely, attributes every fact to a source with a small set of fixed phrases (по слова́м…, как сообща́ет…, по да́нным…), reports speech without the tense "backshift" English uses, and prefers passive and impersonal constructions that keep the human actor out of sight to sound objective. This page reads a short, invented, deliberately mundane report — the opening of a new city park — sentence by sentence, then explains each journalistic feature. The content is fictional and uncontroversial; the grammar is the real subject.

The text

Participial phrases: information packed into a single word

The first sentence already shows the workhorse of news prose: the participle. …но́вый городско́й парк, постро́енный на ме́сте бы́вшего пустыря́ uses постро́енный, a past passive participle from постро́ить ("to build"), agreeing with парк (masculine singular). It means "the park that was built" and compresses a whole relative clause (парк, кото́рый был постро́ен…) into one word set off by a comma. The third sentence does the same with близлежа́щих ("nearby, adjacent"), a present active participle from близлежа́ть, agreeing with the genitive plural кварта́лов. Participles let a journalist stack background detail onto a noun without starting a new sentence — which is exactly why they are everywhere in formal Russian and rare in casual speech.

Source attribution: как сообща́ет…, по слова́м…, по да́нным…

Russian journalism almost never states a fact bare; it ties each one to a source with a small, fixed inventory of phrases. The passage uses three of the most common:

• как сообща́ет
  • nominative ("as [X] reports") — как сообща́ет пресс-слу́жба ("as the press service reports"). The verb сообща́ет is present tense, and the source is the subject in the nominative.
• по слова́м
  • genitive ("according to [someone], in [someone's] words") — по слова́м мэ́ра ("according to the mayor"). слова́м is the dative governed by по; the source that follows is in the genitive (мэ́ра). This frames the claim as a person's statement.
• по да́нным
  • genitive ("according to the data/figures of") — по да́нным администра́ции ("according to the administration's figures"). This frames the claim as objective data rather than personal opinion.

Reported speech with no backshift

In the fourth sentence the mayor is quoted directly: «Мы хоти́м, что́бы у ка́ждой семьи́ бы́ло ме́сто для о́тдыха», — заяви́л мэр. Two features stand out. First, the punctuation: Russian uses угловы́е кавы́чки «…» (guillemets) for quotations, and the reporting clause that follows is introduced by a dash. Second — and crucial when speech is reported indirectly — Russian does not backshift tenses the way English does. In English, "He said he wants" becomes "He said he wanted." In Russian, the tense of the original utterance is kept: Он сказа́л, что хо́чет ("He said that he wants," literally) — the present хо́чет stays present even under a past reporting verb. The same holds for the future and past.

Passive and impersonal constructions: keeping the actor invisible

To sound objective, the report systematically removes the human agent. Three mechanisms do this.

Short passive participles, neuter/agreeing, with no agent named: бы́ло вы́делено о́коло сорока́ миллио́нов ("about forty million were allocated"), вы́сажено бо́лее трёхсо́т дере́вьев ("more than three hundred trees were planted"), обору́довано не́сколько площа́док ("several playgrounds were equipped"). Nobody is said to have done these things — the focus is on the result. Where an agent does appear in such constructions, it stands in the instrumental (e.g. вы́делено администра́цией "allocated by the administration").

Impersonal verbs with no subject at all: Ожида́ется, что… ("It is expected that…") — a reflexive verb in the neuter, no one doing the expecting. This is the formal, agentless equivalent of "people expect."

Numerals, dates, and the government of quantity

News prose is full of numbers, and Russian numerals govern the case of the noun they count — a frequent stumbling block. Watch each one. After о́коло ("about") the whole quantity goes to the genitive: о́коло сорока́ миллио́нов (сорока́ is the genitive of со́рок). After бо́лее ("more than") the counted noun is genitive too: бо́лее двадцати́ ты́сяч жи́телей, бо́лее трёхсо́т дере́вьев (трёхсо́т = genitive of три́ста). The time expression к концу́ сле́дующего го́да uses к + dative (концу́) for a deadline ("by the end of"), with го́да in the genitive ("of the year"). And the date opener В суббо́ту uses в + accusative for a day.

Formal connectors and headline ellipsis

Two more register features round out the journalistic texture. Formal connectors structure the report: как сообща́ет ("as … reports"), по да́нным ("according to the figures"), and Ожида́ется, что ("it is expected that") are all neutral-to-formal links that you would not use in casual chat. And although the body is written in full sentences, a Russian headline for this story would use heavy ellipsis, dropping verbs and articles: В Заре́чном райо́не — но́вый парк ("A new park in the Zarechny district") or Откры́тие парка: 40 миллио́нов рубле́й ("Park opening: 40 million rubles"). The dash stands in for the omitted verb (есть/откры́лся), a hallmark of Russian headline style.

Vocabulary gloss

A register note: заяви́ть ("to state, declare") is the standard reporting verb in news, more formal than сказа́ть ("to say"). обору́довать is biaspectual — the same form serves as both imperfective and perfective — which is common among borrowed -овать verbs and convenient in terse reporting. The whole passage is firmly (formal): the participles, the agentless passives, and the attribution phrases would all be out of place in a casual conversation, where you would say парк, кото́рый постро́или ("the park they built") rather than постро́енный парк.

Common Mistakes