Vremya, or Time, the 9pm news bulletin on Russia’s Channel One, celebrated its 40th anniversary in January with a gimmick. A split screen showed Yekaterina Andreyeva, its icily glamorous presenter, reading today’s news on one side, and a 1980s predecessor on the other. Andreyeva, it turns out, talks about twice as fast.

Russian TV news today is slick and pacy. It boasts all the virtual sets and throbbing theme tunes of its western counterparts. So why do Russians increasingly liken it to the stodgy, propagandistic news of Soviet times?