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| Putin's War on Russia's Free Press
by John M. Curtis Copyright January 12, 2001
Coming to the rescue, U.S. media tycoon and former Time Warner co-chairman Ted Turner entered the sweepstakes, trying to buy 25% of Russia’s only true independent TV network, but he faces an uphill battle. Banking on his busin | ||||||
urning democracy on its head, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin is committed to liquidating what’s left of Russia’s free press and rewriting his own version of history. Fleeing for his life, Vladimir I. Guzinsky—the former owner of Russia’s only independent TV network NTV and parent company Media-Most—now sits in a Spanish jail awaiting extradition, facing a similar fate to the sailors of the ill-fated nuclear submarine Kursk. Now a fugitive and charged with fraud and sedition, the once high-profile media kingpin faces hard times for broadcasting 'unpatriotic' news, daring to lampoon Putin’s specious government. Forced to surrender his stake in NTV in October 2000, Guzinsky handed over the title to Mikhail Lesin, Russia’s minister of press, television and mass communications. Racked with $470 million in debt and on the verge of going belly-up, Media-Most desperately needed a bailout to prevent an outright Kremlin takeover. Without an independent TV network, democratizing Russia is an empty promise.