Kommersant (Russian: Коммерсантъ, IPA: [kəmʲɪrˈsant], The Businessman or Commerce Man, often shortened to Ъ) is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in Russia mostly devoted to politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia certified July 2013 circulation of the daily was 120,000–130,000.^[1]

It is widely considered to be one of Russia's three main business dailies (together with Vedomosti and RBK Daily).^[2]

The original Kommersant newspaper was established in Moscow in 1909, but was shut down by the Bolsheviks following the October Revolution in 1917.^[3]

In 1989, with the onset of press freedom in Russia, Kommersant was relaunched under the ownership of businessman and publicist Vladimir Yakovlev.^[4][5] The first issue was released in January 1990.^[6] It was modeled after Western business journalism.^[5]

The newspaper's title is spelled in Russian with a terminal hard sign (ъ) – a letter that is silent at the end of a word in modern Russian, and was thus largely abolished by the post-revolution Russian spelling reform, in reference to the original Kommersant.^[6] This is played up in the Kommersant logo, which features a script hard sign at the end of somewhat more formal font. The newspaper also refers to itself or its redaction as "Ъ".

Founded as a weekly newspaper, it became popular among business and political elites.^[6] It then became a daily newspaper in 1992.^[6][7] It was owned by the businessman Boris Berezovsky from 1999 until 2006, when he sold it to Badri Patarkatsishvili.^[5][7] In September 2006, it was sold to Alisher Usmanov.^[7]

In January 2005, Kommersant published a protest at a court ruling ordering it to publish a denial of a story about a crisis at Alfa-Bank.^[8]

In 2008, BBC News named Kommersant one of Russia's leading liberal business broadsheets.^[9]