Word: kremlins
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Last Wednesday was deliverance day for Vladimir Gusinsky. When a Madrid court turned down Russia's request to extradite the 48-year-old media magnate on fraud charges - ending his 10-month tussle with Kremlin prosecutors - Gusinsky savored his redemption. Fielding congratulatory calls on three phones at his villa in Sotogrande, he told one well-wisher, "This isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning...
...party politics. Otechestvo, a party headed by former Putin rivals Yuri Luzhkov and Yevgeni Primakov, announced that it would merge with the pro-Putin Yedvinstvo party in November; two more Duma factions threw their lot in with the new force, giving the government a 235-vote majority. Though the Kremlin maintains its actions are financially motivated, many observers don't buy it. "This is a real media pogrom," says political analyst Lilia Shevtsova. "And it's no coincidence the Kremlin has carried it out at the same time it makes obvious plans to form a ruling state party...
...unlikely that anyone could have rescued last week's victims. Both Segodnya and Itogi had earned the Kremlin's disapproval for their clear-eyed reporting on embarrassments such as the Kursk submarine disaster and the quagmire in Chechnya. The publications were owned by Gusinsky's Sem Dnei publishing house, of which Gazprom held a 25% stake plus one share; another 25% was held by Sem Dnei's president, Dmitry Biryukov. After watching Gazprom eviscerate NTV, Biryukov parted company with Gusinsky. On Monday night, one hour before Segodnya was supposed to go to press, Biryukov told editor-in-chief Mikhail Berger...
...Some of the ousted reporters, including Itogi editor Sergei Parkhomenko, vowed to keep publishing on the Internet, for as long as they can elude suppression. Last week the Kremlin went after TNT - a small Media-Most network that has housed many former NTV staffers since Gazprom's takeover - charging the network's accountant with tax evasion. Alexei Venediktov, the head of the popular radio station Ekho Moskvy, expects that "we'll be next in line," and sources tell Time that the Kremlin will soon kill off two liberal weeklies. The heat has also been turned...
...Perhaps the biggest problem for independent journalists is the Kremlin's ownership of the airwaves. A source told Time that the regime has ordered Gazprom to cut TV-6 off the satellite that sends the channel's feed to a dozen provinces outside Moscow; the move would strip TV-6 of millions of viewers. Both TNT and TV-6 also rely on local television companies to carry their programming. The Kremlin allegedly has ordered local firms not to cooperate with either channel. Says Oleg Panfilov, a director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations: "Once all the media...