Litvinenko in Intensive Care

Britain’s Sun newspaper reports more confirmation that Alexander Litvinenko was struck down by a KGB assassin: the poison was laden with radioactivity and a high-ranking Russian official “cannot exclude the possiblity” of their involvement.

A FORMER Russian spy may have been poisoned with radioactive thallium at a London restaurant, a medical expert said. John Henry, a toxicologist treating Alexander Litvinenko, says the former KGB man may need a bone marrow transplant. He said: “The thallium is the least of it – the radioactivity seems more important. In terms of thallium, I do not think I have see a worse case of this. It is too early to say how long it will be before he’s out of danger. He is very ill at the moment.” Prof Henry said it was likely the poison had been swallowed. Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit is leading the hunt for the culprits.

A top Moscow politician has admitted Litvinenko may have been poisoned by the KGB. Viktor Ilyukhin — deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s security committee — declared: “I can’t exclude that possibility.” He said of the dad of one, whose food is feared to have been spiked at a sushi bar: “That former KGB officer had been irritating the Russian authorities for a long time and possibly knew some state secrets. “So when our special services got the chance to operate not only inside but outside the country, they decided to get rid of him.”

Litvinenko, 44, is continuing to fight for life at London’s University College Hospital — guarded by armed police. He was in intensive care, with medics putting his chances of survival at 50:50. Litvinenko is able to talk and make jokes, but his condition remains serious in intensive care. Shocking pictures taken yesterday and released by his family showed the appalling effects of the highly-toxic chemical thallium. Litvinenko was pictured pale and weak in his hospital bed — his hair all gone.

Meanwhile, the Beeb reports that Russian TV is suppressing all news of the attack:

The independent radio station Ekho Moskvy was the first broadcaster to break the story, quoting a report published on a Chechen rebel website.

Since then coverage of the poisoning in the mainstream media has been confined to a small number of outlets.

TV silence

Most noticeably for a media landscape dominated by television, Russia’s three main TV networks seem to have steered clear of the story.

There appears to have been no mention of Mr Litvinenko in any of the main news bulletins or discussion programmes on state-controlled Channel One and Rossiya, nor on NTV, which is owned by the energy giant Gazprom.

Brief reports were, however, broadcast on the corporate-owned Ren TV channel and the business channel RBK TV.

The lack of television coverage came as no shock to Ekho Moskvy’s editor-in-chief, Alexei Venediktov.

“It’s not at all surprising that there’s silence on television, it’s understandable,” he told listeners to his phone-in programme on Sunday.

The launch of an investigation by British police had led to “confusion” in the Russian authorities, he said.

‘Key milestone’

Ekho Moskvy is the only mainstream Russian broadcaster to have aired regular reports on Mr Litvinenko’s poisoning.

Since the British media latched onto the story on Saturday, the station has aired comments from another prominent Kremlin critic to have been granted asylum in Britain, Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev, as well as Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Mr Litvinenko who helped him with his asylum application six years ago.

Earlier, Ekho Moskvy commentator Yuliya Latynina had spoken of the likely fallout from the case.

“This is a fairly key milestone, which undoubtedly alters the image of Russia in the outside world,” she said.

Press coverage, meanwhile, has been minimal, with most papers ignoring Mr Litvinenko’s ordeal.

The only title to have dealt with the story in detail is the Kommersant broadsheet, which carried its own report as well as comments from a number of Russian politicians and former security service officers.

The paper also quoted the exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, another fierce critic of the Kremlin, who visited Mr Litvinenko in hospital on Friday.

For more insights, check out the scathing analysis of Edward Lucas in the Daily Mail (he writes: “The attempted murder of Litvinenko forms part of a grim pattern of intimidation. At home and abroad, enemies of the Kremlin tend to die in mysterious circumstances.”).

To watch a video of Litvinenko speaking out against Putin over the Politkovskaya assassination, click here.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

There’s Poison, and Then There’s Poison

There are those who physically strike at the heart of democracy, and then there are those who cover such actions with insidious propaganda. And there are just plain cowards. Which is the worse, La Russophobe dares to wonder.

Even though the airwaves are awash with evidence that the KGB poisoned defector Alexander Litvinenko, Independent columnist and neo-Soviet sycophant Mary Dejevsky (pictured left, the only image we could find) seeks to defect blame from the Kremlin’s doorstep in a November 20 column. A KGB defector in the process of investgating the killing of Anna Politkovskaya is killed by radioactive poisoning, but Mary urges us not to rush to judgment. Yes, by all means, let’s give the Kremlin as much time as possible to kill as many people as it can, and judge them only when there is a great big pile of corpses that stink so badly we just can’t stand it any more. The next time you wonder how maniacs like Stalin and Hitler manage to rise to power, just have a gander at one of Mary’s inane scribblings. She writes:

The new James Bond film is playing to rapturous audiences across the country and right on cue a real-life tale bursts on to the scene from the sleazier end of the 007 repertoire. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian secret agent granted asylum in this country, is in a London hospital after supping with a fellow spook at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Scotland Yard is investigating the possibility that he was poisoned, perhaps with thallium, the former Soviet KGB’s lethal drug of choice. Here I should lay my cards on the table. I do not like spy stories outside the covers of a John le Carré novel and I never liked covering them as a reporter. I find the cloak and dagger world of espionage, with its necessary lies and subterfuge, unsettling. Any truth rests on constantly shifting sand. The borders of fact and fantasy are forever blurred. And a secret agent is precisely that: secret; a man (or woman) behind a mask, an unknown quantity of unknown loyalty. Spies who have defected I find doubly sinister: once someone has betrayed one set of loyalties, how much easier it must be to betray another.

Here’s what she wrote about Putin back in July:

There is a genuine debate to be had here, both about the nature of post-Soviet Russia and the policies we in Britain and Europe should pursue. And it is one we should have had long ago. We did not have it in Boris Yeltsin’s time because the West was so heavily invested in his survival. We have not had it since Vladimir Putin succeeded him because, until very recently, the negative view rooted in old-style Soviet preconceptions was so dominant. Opposing voices struggled to be heard. It is a healthy sign that finally something akin to a real discussion is taking place. But it is regrettable that this is happening not because of any heightened curiosity about what is really going on in Russia, but because of our selfish panic about energy supplies.

This might as well be Vladimir Putin talking. And in fact, it actually might be. Because Mary is an ardent participant in the Valdai Discussion Club, which provides her with an all-expense-paid luxury sojourn to hobnob with Putin and his KGB cronies from from time to time, as La Russophobe has previously exposed. In other words, she’s been bought off. An honest person, or just one with a vague sense of the appearance of properity, would disclose this fact when talking about judging Putin. Read Mary’s articles for yourself. She doesn’t.

So let’s recap: This man has the courage to defect from Russia and provide secrets to the West. He continues to investigate Russian atrocities, marking himself for assassination. And Mary’s response? The fact that he’s done this is suspicous (courage is obviously not a word in her vocabulary, although she can say “please pass the fois gras” at Valdai quite emphatically), and cause for us to ignore him. In fact, good riddance to him, she says. And until we actually see Vladimir Putin put a gun up against someone’s head and pull the trigger, mum’s the word. In fact, given that Forest Gump movie, it’s pretty clear we’d have to be awful careful even then. Maybe she thinks we should wait until Putin becomes the Prime Minister of Britain.

Then again, maybe that’s her desired outcome.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

There’s Poison, and Then There’s Poison

There are those who physically strike at the heart of democracy, and then there are those who cover such actions with insidious propaganda. And there are just plain cowards. Which is the worse, La Russophobe dares to wonder.

Even though the airwaves are awash with evidence that the KGB poisoned defector Alexander Litvinenko, Independent columnist and neo-Soviet sycophant Mary Dejevsky (pictured left, the only image we could find) seeks to defect blame from the Kremlin’s doorstep in a November 20 column. A KGB defector in the process of investgating the killing of Anna Politkovskaya is killed by radioactive poisoning, but Mary urges us not to rush to judgment. Yes, by all means, let’s give the Kremlin as much time as possible to kill as many people as it can, and judge them only when there is a great big pile of corpses that stink so badly we just can’t stand it any more. The next time you wonder how maniacs like Stalin and Hitler manage to rise to power, just have a gander at one of Mary’s inane scribblings. She writes:

The new James Bond film is playing to rapturous audiences across the country and right on cue a real-life tale bursts on to the scene from the sleazier end of the 007 repertoire. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian secret agent granted asylum in this country, is in a London hospital after supping with a fellow spook at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Scotland Yard is investigating the possibility that he was poisoned, perhaps with thallium, the former Soviet KGB’s lethal drug of choice. Here I should lay my cards on the table. I do not like spy stories outside the covers of a John le Carré novel and I never liked covering them as a reporter. I find the cloak and dagger world of espionage, with its necessary lies and subterfuge, unsettling. Any truth rests on constantly shifting sand. The borders of fact and fantasy are forever blurred. And a secret agent is precisely that: secret; a man (or woman) behind a mask, an unknown quantity of unknown loyalty. Spies who have defected I find doubly sinister: once someone has betrayed one set of loyalties, how much easier it must be to betray another.

Here’s what she wrote about Putin back in July:

There is a genuine debate to be had here, both about the nature of post-Soviet Russia and the policies we in Britain and Europe should pursue. And it is one we should have had long ago. We did not have it in Boris Yeltsin’s time because the West was so heavily invested in his survival. We have not had it since Vladimir Putin succeeded him because, until very recently, the negative view rooted in old-style Soviet preconceptions was so dominant. Opposing voices struggled to be heard. It is a healthy sign that finally something akin to a real discussion is taking place. But it is regrettable that this is happening not because of any heightened curiosity about what is really going on in Russia, but because of our selfish panic about energy supplies.

This might as well be Vladimir Putin talking. And in fact, it actually might be. Because Mary is an ardent participant in the Valdai Discussion Club, which provides her with an all-expense-paid luxury sojourn to hobnob with Putin and his KGB cronies from from time to time, as La Russophobe has previously exposed. In other words, she’s been bought off. An honest person, or just one with a vague sense of the appearance of properity, would disclose this fact when talking about judging Putin. Read Mary’s articles for yourself. She doesn’t.

So let’s recap: This man has the courage to defect from Russia and provide secrets to the West. He continues to investigate Russian atrocities, marking himself for assassination. And Mary’s response? The fact that he’s done this is suspicous (courage is obviously not a word in her vocabulary, although she can say “please pass the fois gras” at Valdai quite emphatically), and cause for us to ignore him. In fact, good riddance to him, she says. And until we actually see Vladimir Putin put a gun up against someone’s head and pull the trigger, mum’s the word. In fact, given that Forest Gump movie, it’s pretty clear we’d have to be awful careful even then. Maybe she thinks we should wait until Putin becomes the Prime Minister of Britain.

Then again, maybe that’s her desired outcome.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

There’s Poison, and Then There’s Poison

There are those who physically strike at the heart of democracy, and then there are those who cover such actions with insidious propaganda. And there are just plain cowards. Which is the worse, La Russophobe dares to wonder.

Even though the airwaves are awash with evidence that the KGB poisoned defector Alexander Litvinenko, Independent columnist and neo-Soviet sycophant Mary Dejevsky (pictured left, the only image we could find) seeks to defect blame from the Kremlin’s doorstep in a November 20 column. A KGB defector in the process of investgating the killing of Anna Politkovskaya is killed by radioactive poisoning, but Mary urges us not to rush to judgment. Yes, by all means, let’s give the Kremlin as much time as possible to kill as many people as it can, and judge them only when there is a great big pile of corpses that stink so badly we just can’t stand it any more. The next time you wonder how maniacs like Stalin and Hitler manage to rise to power, just have a gander at one of Mary’s inane scribblings. She writes:

The new James Bond film is playing to rapturous audiences across the country and right on cue a real-life tale bursts on to the scene from the sleazier end of the 007 repertoire. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian secret agent granted asylum in this country, is in a London hospital after supping with a fellow spook at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Scotland Yard is investigating the possibility that he was poisoned, perhaps with thallium, the former Soviet KGB’s lethal drug of choice. Here I should lay my cards on the table. I do not like spy stories outside the covers of a John le Carré novel and I never liked covering them as a reporter. I find the cloak and dagger world of espionage, with its necessary lies and subterfuge, unsettling. Any truth rests on constantly shifting sand. The borders of fact and fantasy are forever blurred. And a secret agent is precisely that: secret; a man (or woman) behind a mask, an unknown quantity of unknown loyalty. Spies who have defected I find doubly sinister: once someone has betrayed one set of loyalties, how much easier it must be to betray another.

Here’s what she wrote about Putin back in July:

There is a genuine debate to be had here, both about the nature of post-Soviet Russia and the policies we in Britain and Europe should pursue. And it is one we should have had long ago. We did not have it in Boris Yeltsin’s time because the West was so heavily invested in his survival. We have not had it since Vladimir Putin succeeded him because, until very recently, the negative view rooted in old-style Soviet preconceptions was so dominant. Opposing voices struggled to be heard. It is a healthy sign that finally something akin to a real discussion is taking place. But it is regrettable that this is happening not because of any heightened curiosity about what is really going on in Russia, but because of our selfish panic about energy supplies.

This might as well be Vladimir Putin talking. And in fact, it actually might be. Because Mary is an ardent participant in the Valdai Discussion Club, which provides her with an all-expense-paid luxury sojourn to hobnob with Putin and his KGB cronies from from time to time, as La Russophobe has previously exposed. In other words, she’s been bought off. An honest person, or just one with a vague sense of the appearance of properity, would disclose this fact when talking about judging Putin. Read Mary’s articles for yourself. She doesn’t.

So let’s recap: This man has the courage to defect from Russia and provide secrets to the West. He continues to investigate Russian atrocities, marking himself for assassination. And Mary’s response? The fact that he’s done this is suspicous (courage is obviously not a word in her vocabulary, although she can say “please pass the fois gras” at Valdai quite emphatically), and cause for us to ignore him. In fact, good riddance to him, she says. And until we actually see Vladimir Putin put a gun up against someone’s head and pull the trigger, mum’s the word. In fact, given that Forest Gump movie, it’s pretty clear we’d have to be awful careful even then. Maybe she thinks we should wait until Putin becomes the Prime Minister of Britain.

Then again, maybe that’s her desired outcome.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

There’s Poison, and Then There’s Poison

There are those who physically strike at the heart of democracy, and then there are those who cover such actions with insidious propaganda. And there are just plain cowards. Which is the worse, La Russophobe dares to wonder.

Even though the airwaves are awash with evidence that the KGB poisoned defector Alexander Litvinenko, Independent columnist and neo-Soviet sycophant Mary Dejevsky (pictured left, the only image we could find) seeks to defect blame from the Kremlin’s doorstep in a November 20 column. A KGB defector in the process of investgating the killing of Anna Politkovskaya is killed by radioactive poisoning, but Mary urges us not to rush to judgment. Yes, by all means, let’s give the Kremlin as much time as possible to kill as many people as it can, and judge them only when there is a great big pile of corpses that stink so badly we just can’t stand it any more. The next time you wonder how maniacs like Stalin and Hitler manage to rise to power, just have a gander at one of Mary’s inane scribblings. She writes:

The new James Bond film is playing to rapturous audiences across the country and right on cue a real-life tale bursts on to the scene from the sleazier end of the 007 repertoire. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian secret agent granted asylum in this country, is in a London hospital after supping with a fellow spook at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Scotland Yard is investigating the possibility that he was poisoned, perhaps with thallium, the former Soviet KGB’s lethal drug of choice. Here I should lay my cards on the table. I do not like spy stories outside the covers of a John le Carré novel and I never liked covering them as a reporter. I find the cloak and dagger world of espionage, with its necessary lies and subterfuge, unsettling. Any truth rests on constantly shifting sand. The borders of fact and fantasy are forever blurred. And a secret agent is precisely that: secret; a man (or woman) behind a mask, an unknown quantity of unknown loyalty. Spies who have defected I find doubly sinister: once someone has betrayed one set of loyalties, how much easier it must be to betray another.

Here’s what she wrote about Putin back in July:

There is a genuine debate to be had here, both about the nature of post-Soviet Russia and the policies we in Britain and Europe should pursue. And it is one we should have had long ago. We did not have it in Boris Yeltsin’s time because the West was so heavily invested in his survival. We have not had it since Vladimir Putin succeeded him because, until very recently, the negative view rooted in old-style Soviet preconceptions was so dominant. Opposing voices struggled to be heard. It is a healthy sign that finally something akin to a real discussion is taking place. But it is regrettable that this is happening not because of any heightened curiosity about what is really going on in Russia, but because of our selfish panic about energy supplies.

This might as well be Vladimir Putin talking. And in fact, it actually might be. Because Mary is an ardent participant in the Valdai Discussion Club, which provides her with an all-expense-paid luxury sojourn to hobnob with Putin and his KGB cronies from from time to time, as La Russophobe has previously exposed. In other words, she’s been bought off. An honest person, or just one with a vague sense of the appearance of properity, would disclose this fact when talking about judging Putin. Read Mary’s articles for yourself. She doesn’t.

So let’s recap: This man has the courage to defect from Russia and provide secrets to the West. He continues to investigate Russian atrocities, marking himself for assassination. And Mary’s response? The fact that he’s done this is suspicous (courage is obviously not a word in her vocabulary, although she can say “please pass the fois gras” at Valdai quite emphatically), and cause for us to ignore him. In fact, good riddance to him, she says. And until we actually see Vladimir Putin put a gun up against someone’s head and pull the trigger, mum’s the word. In fact, given that Forest Gump movie, it’s pretty clear we’d have to be awful careful even then. Maybe she thinks we should wait until Putin becomes the Prime Minister of Britain.

Then again, maybe that’s her desired outcome.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

There’s Poison, and Then There’s Poison

There are those who physically strike at the heart of democracy, and then there are those who cover such actions with insidious propaganda. And there are just plain cowards. Which is the worse, La Russophobe dares to wonder.

Even though the airwaves are awash with evidence that the KGB poisoned defector Alexander Litvinenko, Independent columnist and neo-Soviet sycophant Mary Dejevsky (pictured left, the only image we could find) seeks to defect blame from the Kremlin’s doorstep in a November 20 column. A KGB defector in the process of investgating the killing of Anna Politkovskaya is killed by radioactive poisoning, but Mary urges us not to rush to judgment. Yes, by all means, let’s give the Kremlin as much time as possible to kill as many people as it can, and judge them only when there is a great big pile of corpses that stink so badly we just can’t stand it any more. The next time you wonder how maniacs like Stalin and Hitler manage to rise to power, just have a gander at one of Mary’s inane scribblings. She writes:

The new James Bond film is playing to rapturous audiences across the country and right on cue a real-life tale bursts on to the scene from the sleazier end of the 007 repertoire. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian secret agent granted asylum in this country, is in a London hospital after supping with a fellow spook at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Scotland Yard is investigating the possibility that he was poisoned, perhaps with thallium, the former Soviet KGB’s lethal drug of choice. Here I should lay my cards on the table. I do not like spy stories outside the covers of a John le Carré novel and I never liked covering them as a reporter. I find the cloak and dagger world of espionage, with its necessary lies and subterfuge, unsettling. Any truth rests on constantly shifting sand. The borders of fact and fantasy are forever blurred. And a secret agent is precisely that: secret; a man (or woman) behind a mask, an unknown quantity of unknown loyalty. Spies who have defected I find doubly sinister: once someone has betrayed one set of loyalties, how much easier it must be to betray another.

Here’s what she wrote about Putin back in July:

There is a genuine debate to be had here, both about the nature of post-Soviet Russia and the policies we in Britain and Europe should pursue. And it is one we should have had long ago. We did not have it in Boris Yeltsin’s time because the West was so heavily invested in his survival. We have not had it since Vladimir Putin succeeded him because, until very recently, the negative view rooted in old-style Soviet preconceptions was so dominant. Opposing voices struggled to be heard. It is a healthy sign that finally something akin to a real discussion is taking place. But it is regrettable that this is happening not because of any heightened curiosity about what is really going on in Russia, but because of our selfish panic about energy supplies.

This might as well be Vladimir Putin talking. And in fact, it actually might be. Because Mary is an ardent participant in the Valdai Discussion Club, which provides her with an all-expense-paid luxury sojourn to hobnob with Putin and his KGB cronies from from time to time, as La Russophobe has previously exposed. In other words, she’s been bought off. An honest person, or just one with a vague sense of the appearance of properity, would disclose this fact when talking about judging Putin. Read Mary’s articles for yourself. She doesn’t.

So let’s recap: This man has the courage to defect from Russia and provide secrets to the West. He continues to investigate Russian atrocities, marking himself for assassination. And Mary’s response? The fact that he’s done this is suspicous (courage is obviously not a word in her vocabulary, although she can say “please pass the fois gras” at Valdai quite emphatically), and cause for us to ignore him. In fact, good riddance to him, she says. And until we actually see Vladimir Putin put a gun up against someone’s head and pull the trigger, mum’s the word. In fact, given that Forest Gump movie, it’s pretty clear we’d have to be awful careful even then. Maybe she thinks we should wait until Putin becomes the Prime Minister of Britain.

Then again, maybe that’s her desired outcome.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

What will Russia,إن شاء الله, look like in 2050?

What will Russia look like in the year 2050?

The population will have declined to under 100 million. The tiny island nation of Japan will have a far larger population than Russia, the world’s largest land mass.

At least 10% of the population will be infected with AIDS.

Russia will also, إن شاء الله (Insha’Allah, with the will of God), be a Muslim country. While Russia’s overall birthrate is just 1.28 and Moscow’s is even lower at 1.1 children per woman (2.1 is needed just for population maintenance), the fertility rate for Tatars living in Moscow is six children per woman, while the Chechen and Ingush communities are averaging 10 children per woman. Russia’s Muslim population has increased by 40 percent since 1989, to about 25 million, and by 2015, Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s conscript army and by 2020 one-fifth of the population. Combined with the fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been flocking to Russia in search of work, as well as short Slavic lifespans (especially men) it is expected that the Russian population will be majority-Muslim by 2050.

The only way Russia won’t be Muslim is if it starts building extermination camps or magically changes the Slavic ability to reproduce. Given the difficulty of the latter, combined with increasingly blatant and even state-approved racism, the former isn’t out of the question. The Washington Times reports: “‘Russia is historically a Slavic, Orthodox Christian land, and we need to make sure it stays that way,’ said Alexander Belov, the head of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, an increasingly powerful lobby that has organized dozens of rallies in recent months.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

GAZPROM Gobbles Up Komsomolka

The Moscow Times reports yet another revolting development on the Russian media front. After purchasing Kommersant, Russia’s version of the New York Times, government-owned gas monopoly GAZPROM has now purchased Russia’s version of USA Today, Komsomolskaya Pravda, which was already pretty much of a Kremlin mouthpiece anyway. But the KGB cowards never feel secure.

Gazprom will expand its extensive media clout by buying the country’s most widely read newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, the head of Gazprom’s media unit said Tuesday.

The deal had been widely anticipated since the tabloid’s owner, Vladimir Potanin’s Prof-Media, made clear that it wanted to get out of the newspaper business early this year.

Gazprom-Media, which owns NTV television and Izvestia, will complete the deal by early next year, said company head Nikolai Senkevich.

“We are rushing to do it by the end of the year, but it will probably happen in January,” Senkevich said, Interfax reported. He said the deal was complicated but that there were no serious barriers to its completion.

He did not disclose the size of the deal. Industry insiders have said the newspaper is worth about $70 million.

KP editor Vladimir Sungorkin said he did not expect the new owner would meddle in the tabloid’s editorial policy.

“Both Gazprom-Media and Komsomolskaya Pravda are quite serious professional organizations, and therefore we don’t expect any revolutions,” he said, Interfax reported.

Some of KP’s political coverage is deferential toward President Vladimir Putin.

Its long-serving editor, Vladimir Mamontov, moved to Izvestia late last year after Prof-Media sold that newspaper to Gazprom-Media.

KP has a total readership of 8.4 million people, according to TNS Gallup Media. It is ranked No. 63 in the world by the World Association of Newspapers and prints 700,000 to 830,000 copies daily and 3.1 million on weekends.

Kremlin critics say President Vladimir Putin has squeezed media freedoms by bringing major newspapers and television channels under the control of state-run companies like Gazprom.

Analysts say the Kremlin is especially keen to bring major media outlets under its control ahead of presidential elections in 2008, when Putin must step down after two terms in office.

Gazprom, whose CEO is Putin ally Alexei Miller, has been on a shopping spree over the past four years, buying up electricity, media, nuclear and oil assets. The state has a majority stake in the gas monopoly. Gazprom-Media’s other assets include Ekho Moskvy radio, NTV-Plus cable television,

Prof-Media, which is part of the Interros holding, has been moving away from politics and into entertainment for some time. This year, it has announced deals to buy three entertainment television channels: TV-3, 2×2 and Rambler.

Prof-Media also controls radio stations, a movie theater chain called Cinema Park and Central Partnership, Russia’s largest independent film production and distribution company.

Its printing arm, Prof-Media Print, has been operating since 2004 in partnership with A-Pressen, Norway’s second-largest media group, and it owns the weekly tabloid Express Gazeta and the sports daily Sovietsky Sport, along with a handful of business publications. This year, the company also acquired the Afisha publishing house.

An extensive fire gutted KP’s offices on Ulitsa Pravdy in February, causing $2 million in damages, Sungorkin said.

The name Komsomolskaya Pravda means “Komsomol Truth.” The word “komsomol,” in turn, refers to an organization for young communists, an indoctrination program, a Soviet youth cult. Now, gentle reader, you may well be wondering how Russia’s largest-circulating newspaper can still be calling itself by that name so many years after the fall of communism. After all, perhaps it is unlikely that Germany’s largest-circulating newspaper would be called “The Hitler Youth Times.” La Russophobe has no answer, unless it was a signal that Russians were just biding their time, waiting until the “good old days” of totalitarian dicatorship returned.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

LR on PP

Check out La Russophobe‘s latest installment on Publius Pundit, regarding the attempted assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, and feel free to comment on this frightening turn of neo-Soviet events and its implications for Russia’s future and U.S. policy towards Russia. Once again, it appears that Britian is sounding the clarion call of warning regarding events in Russia. Will we listen more attentively this time around?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !