Alexei Venediktov (Russian: Алексей Алексеевич Венедиктов; born 18 December 1955) is a Russian journalist, editor-in-chief and host at the Echo of Moscow radio station, president of the Echo TV Russia.
Venediktov graduated from the evening division of Moscow Pedagogical State University in 1978. After graduation, he worked for 20 years as a history teacher at Moscow school №875.
Since 1990 he has been working for Echo of Moscow.[1] Since 1996 he has been the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow. Since 2002 he has been president of the Echo TV Russia.
In September, 2006 Alexei tried himself as a host on TV-channels Domashny, V kruge sveta.
Owns 18% of Echo of Moscow's shares.
In December, 2011, after parliamentary elections and accusations of electoral fraud, some 6,000 gathered in Moscow to protest the fraud and some 300 were arrested including Alexey Navalny. While "Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, [had taken] the standard, vaguely neo-Soviet line: invoking spies and illicit cash" about Navalny a week earlier, Venediktov called the arrest "'a political mistake: jailing Navalny transforms him from an online leader into an offline one.' Serving time in jail and publicly suffering at the hands of an unpopular state is any opposition leader’s dream, Venediktov wrote [on Echo]. 'Historically, such political mistakes prove costly to those who commit them. Not right away, but inevitably. Alas.'"[2]