By Elena Bormotova: The country's largest news agency was founded on December 23, 1918, just a few days before the proclamation of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. For a long time, it closely cooperated with the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), at he same time retaining its legal independence. Only in 1991, when the country gained independence, the news agency turned into the Belarusian Information Telegraph Agency. Today it is one of the leaders of the global media scene.
BelTA employs several hundreds of journalists in the country and abroad and publishes such newspapers and magazines as 7 Days, Belaruskaya Dumka and Economy of Belarus.













