OREANDA-NEWS. January 5, 2010. Rostelecom (NYSE: ROS; RTS and MICEX: RTKM, RTKMP), Russia’s national  telecommunications operator, today announced that upon the results of assessment of the Company’s corporate governance, RID-Expert RA Consortium (consisting of the Russian Directors Institute and Expert RA Rating Agency) upgraded the Company’s rating to category “8” within the National Corporate Governance Rating Scale.

The “8” rating is currently the highest one for the Russian companies, and no other company has such high rating. The “8” rating proves the extensive corporate governance practice adopted within Rostelecom as well as high level of information transparency.

RID-Expert RA Consortium believes that falling within “8” category means that the Company has low corporate governance risks, complies with the Russian legislation, as well as substantially follows, in its practice, recommendations contained in the Corporate Conduct Code and individual recommendations of advanced international corporate governance practices.

The National Corporate Governance Rating of RID-Expert RA (NCGR) expresses an opinion of RID-Expert RA Consortium about the corporate governance practice of different companies.

NCGR (http://www.rid.ru/rating/) is an integrated assessment of different companies’ corporate governance practice in compliance with four criteria: the rights of shareholders, the membership and efficiency of the governing bodies, information disclosure, corporate responsibility. NCGR is also a risk assessment of corporate governance practice: on the opinion of RID-Expert RA the higher level of rating means the lower corporate governance risk in the evaluation company.