German media group WAZ purchased a leading Russian regional weekly publication and online portal.

WAZ Media Group, publisher of Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), agreed to acquire a 75 percent stake in Sloboda, a weekly paper in the city of Tula, Russia.

Sloboda, which is estimated EUR 10 million value, is published since 1994, and has a circulation of 100,000, and over EUR 2 million annual sales. WAZ plans to launch weekly publications in Russian regional markets together with Sloboda, according to BlogNation.

BlogNation said that WAZ publishes 37 other daily newspapers with over 2.5 million circulation, 112 popular magazines and trade journals, 133 advertising journals, and some 250 customer magazines in Germany, Austria, Thuringia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Its annual sales of the group are over EUR 2 billion.