Even before the March 12 decree, however, the Russian authorities had begun exerting pressure on the Internet

This was one of the most stable and prominent successes of democratic Russia since the late 1980s. Unfortunately, Putin made some successful attempts to tame and regulate the media. From practical intimidation of the media, the authorities turned to legalizing their new understanding of freedom of the media right. The number of criminal cases against journalists, accusing them of libel and insulting public officials, is increasing.

On July 28, 2006, Putin signed amendments to the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity. The new legislation, which allows imprisonment of up to three years for journalists, and the suspension or closure of their publications, if they are convicted of extremism, went into effect on October 28, 2006. Amendments to Article 1 of the law broaden the definition of extremist activity to include "public slander directed toward figures fulfilling the state duties of the Russian Federation," as well as "interfering with the legal duties of organs of state authorities."

Such vague language allows public officials to interpret the law as they please and effectively target critics, Committee to Protect Journalists sources said. "This measure is reminiscent of the kind of catchall laws that were used in Soviet times to control the media," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. "Those in power can now label any journalist an 'extremist' and effectively stifle critical reporting."

According to the Russian Press Committee, in the beginning of 2008 Russia has 72,000 media outlets, of which almost 60,000 are printed media. Printed media in Russia grow at the annual rate of 10 percent.

The number of registered media has grown steadily over the last three years, Boris Boyarskov, head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Mass Communications, Communications and Preservation of Cultural Heritage, said on 12 March, Interfax news agency reported. In 2006, around 7,000 new media were registered, whereas in 2007 this number reached 9,111 (6,924 print and 2,187 electronic).

Boyarskov added that at present, 150 free and paid TV channels exist in Russia, which is three times more than three years ago. He noted that this shows that the media business in Russia is becoming profitable. According to expert estimates, media businesses accounts for 1.4 percent of GDP and have an average annual growth rate of at least 25 percent, Boyarskov was reported as saying.

In 2007, a total of 250 written warnings were issued to various media for breaking license agreements, and 104 orders to eliminate existing violations were sent out, he said. Boyarskov also gave recent media statistics: As of the beginning of 2008, 92,850 mass media were registered in Russia, of which 73,078 were print media and 19,772 were electronic, Interfax said in a later report.

The State Duma passed in a first reading on April 26, 2008, a bill that would allow courts to close media outlets for publishing libelous statements, a law critics say would give authorities an additional tool to crack down on dissent. The bill would add "dissemination of deliberately false information damaging individual honor and dignity" to the list of offenses for which a media outlet can be shut down.Under current law, courts can close media outlets for publishing state secrets, extremist statements and statements supporting terrorism.

All but one parliamentary deputy, Boris Reznik of United Russia, approved the bill. The bill's author, 24-year-old Robert Shlegel, the youngest deputy from the ruling United Russia party who had previously served as a spokesman for the pro-Kremlin youth group, Nashi, said on April 26 that the bill was aimed at making Russian media "more civilized."

Authorities have initiated numerous libel cases in recent years involving reports about public officials. In one high-profile case, Ivanovo journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov was convicted in October 2006 of publicly insulting a public official and fined 20,000 rubles ($610) for referring to Putin as "a phallic symbol" in an opinion piece.

Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said the amendment would give authorities an additional instrument to shut down independent-minded media outlets. "Now that television and most newspapers are under the Kremlin's control, authorities want to control the very few media outlets that remain free in the country," he said. "There still are a few newspapers  and the Internet  that are out of its control."

Kremlin critics would likely be targeted should the bill become law, Panfilov said. "It would work the same way the law on extremism works, only against those who oppose the powers-that-be," he said. "If the extremism law worked properly, many Duma deputies would be in jail for their extremist statements."

Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists and author of the current law on mass media, said it was unnecessary to include the amendment in the media law because libel is already a criminal offense. "You should then include [in the media law] that you should not encourage murder, rape or theft," Fedotov said, according to Interfax.

Even without the libel amendment, "any word that a governor or mayor doesn't like is considered by courts to be false information, and the paper is simply closed," Fedotov said.

The law doesn't use the word "slander" but redefined it with "intentionally false information," which is just about anything. Perhaps more important than the vague, elastic language is the fact that the amendment gives the Ministry of Justice the power to issue warnings to media outlets for publishing slanderous and libelous material. Two warnings in 12 months allows the justice ministry to shut the media outlet down. pending trial.

It is a question of a court's right to close down media entities based on an accusation of libel. Previously, only the author of an article had been liable to punishment, and he got off with a fine if he was unable to prove the truthfulness of the article.

Theoretically, of course, judges may not deem a particular article to be libelous. However, the draft law proposed by deputy Robert Shlegel contains a dangerous norm: At the request of the Federal Service for Monitoring the Observance of Legislation in the Sphere of Mass Communication and Protection of the Cultural Heritage, the activity of a mass medium can be suspended for the duration of the investigation. The court may convene a year later. What would happen to any non-state media entity during this time?

Igor Yakovenko, the secretary general of the Russian Union of Journalists, has spoken categorically against amending the law so that the media would be obliged to retract their articles if federal or regional government bodies demand it. "At the present time, the Russian Constitution and the law on media rest on a number of basic principles, one of which being equal before the law," he said. "This means that all conflicts and disputes are resolved in court. If the amendments proposed by the prosecutors are adopted, the media will be subjected to bureaucrats."

Journalist are now prosecuted for libel more often than before. Every year, Russian courts examine about 3500 lawsuits against journalists in which plaintiffs seek to defend their honor and dignity, chairman of the Union of Journalists of Russian Vsevolod Bogdanov said. "This figure is higher than the total for similar cases in all other countries put together," Bogdanov said on June 10, 2008, at the first meeting of the working group to draft changes to legislation on the mass media. The meeting, chaired by First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Oleg Morozov, was held at the State Duma. The chairman of the Union of Journalists pointed out that one of the reasons the number of these cases was so high was that lawsuits to defend honor and dignity are exempt from litigation fees.

"This law, if passed, would be detrimental to the media because it would allow for the closure of entire media outlets, not just the punishment of the author of the defamatory materials in question," Andrei Richter, director of the Moscow-based Media Law and Policy Institute. "It would also send a strong signal to the media that the state is watching what they publish, which, in turn, would have a chilling effect on their coverage."

The Russian Public Chamber also is against amendments to the law on the mass media, which will toughen responsibility for unreliable information. "Without legal guarantees for the right, the freedom of speech turns into an empty declaration," Pavel Astakhov, member of the Public Chamber and lawyer told Interfax. ( On May 19, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, a senior leader of United Russia, said that his party had changed its position on the bill. The administration was also against the amendments. President Dmitry Medvedev in effect sank proposed changes to the law on June 2, 2008. Medvedev made a critical note on the new amendments to the media bill and sent it to Parliament speaker Gryzlov.

"It would be logical to remove this draft from further discussion," Medvedev said in his note, published by Russia's three main news agencies."It is obvious that the ... draft law could lead only to the creation of hindrances to the normal functioning of the media, and does not accomplish the declared aims: to defend citizens from the distribution of material that is libelous."

There won't be a new law on the media, since no new law is necessary; but there will be "a set of special laws" intended to regulate the Russian media industry. This was announced after the first meeting of a working group established by the United Russia faction in the Duma to prepare a new edition of the law on the media.

This meeting was attended by United Russia lawmakers and representatives of the Federation Council, the Public Chamber and the media industry (including the Russian Union of Journalists). The working group's initial objective was changed substantially. "Passing a new law on the media is no longer the group's purpose, thank God," said Mikhail Fedotov, Russian Union of Journalists secretary and author of the law that has been in place since 1991.

Senior Deputy Duma Speaker Oleg Morozov, chairman of the working group, said after the meeting that the group considers "the current law on the media to be fundamental and doctrinal." Thus, it needs only some changes related to "the real time-dependent innovations that couldn't have been foreseen 17 years ago," he said.

First of all, a number of new laws need to be passed to regulate specific sectors of the media industry. According to Morozov, the working group has decided to "compile a list of media problems, hear a number of reports on each problem and then use this information to write up proposals for lawmaking initiatives." Morozov said that all work on preparing the lawmaking initiatives should be completed in October. Apart from Morozov, the working group includes 11 members of Parliament.

There were attacks on the existing media law from other directions as well. In the April 10, 2008 session of the Duma security committee, without any special publicity the deputies were given a draft law prepared by the Russian Federation Prosecutor General's Office, on intensifying the struggle against extremism. The prosecutors are therefore proposing to enhance their powers in the fight against extremism of all kinds and types.

They intend to reinforce the right of any state organ on the federal, regional or district level, to demand the mandatory publication by editorial offices of rebuttals on behalf of these structures. If a mass medium cannot prove the veracity of the published material, the rebuttal must be published under threat of a fine of between 3000 and 5000 rubles (US$91 and US$152). At the same time, newspapers will also be made to print warnings on the impermissibility of distributing extremist materials.

The Prosecutor General's Office draft law also aspires to solve the problems of the Internet. Information distributed on the Net is declared extremist through the court at the petition of the prosecutor, and after that, access to the site must be cut off. But if it appears over and over again, once again by decision of the court the provider must cut off access to the banned website to users from the Russian Federation territory. It is given only a month to do so after the court ruling.

The most recent World Public Opinion poll shows that the majority of people in the world favor freedom of the press. The answers of Russian residents show that they have a special opinion: Forty-four percent of them believe that authorities have the right to control the media and prevent the publication of materials that could destabilize the nation's mentality. But at the same time, 69 percent of those polled are convinced that Russia has a free press, and every sixth one thinks that there is too much media freedom.

This is a paradoxical situation. Two-thirds of Russians are enthusiastic supporters of society's democratic development, but they are not so sure about freedom of the press. The majority of them believe that the authorities should be controlled by the people. But isn't the press the most powerful and effective means of control?

Moreover, during the poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) two years ago, 63 percent of citizens voted for the introduction of state censorship. There were no more polls on this subject later.

According to estimates by the Levada Center, 56 percent of Russians are confident that "the Russian authorities do not threaten freedom of the press and the operation of the independent media in any way."

But the reality is different. The monitoring conducted by human rights organizations, for instance, the Glasnost Defense Foundation, shows that more and more editorial boards are being subjected to legal harassment, fines and eviction from their offices. More and more journalists are being dismissed, beaten and arrested. Russia has the second highest number of journalists killed while performing their professional duty during the last ten years.

Not all Russian citizens know that the Constitution bans censorship of the mass media, but most of them want it, according to a poll.Over half of respondents  58 percent  said the mass media need state censorship, including 26 percent who demanded this emphatically, VTsIOM pollsters told Interfax, following a poll in 46 regions on May 31 and June 1.

One-quarter of those surveyed  24 percent  oppose censorship, including 8 percent who oppose it "absolutely"; 18 percent were undecided. Forty percent of those polled said censorship was a shield against violence, excesses and vulgarity in the mass media.

However, colleagues of the state sociologists believe that the VTsIOM results do not reflect the population's real opinion, because the question was put incorrectly. "This is a typical VTsIOM approach. It is obvious that you will get the result they got with such a point-blank question. This is evidently the result the people who ordered the study need," Doctor of Sociological Sciences Andrey Milekhin, president of the Romir research holding company, believes. Doubts are also elicited by the use of the word "censorship" in the poll. The VTsIOM sociologists narrowed this concept down to "restricting the showing of violence, depravity and vulgarity." This is borne out by the following question: "If you believe that such censorship is necessary, then why and for what reason?" Some 40 percent of Russians answered it by saying that censorship is necessary because a lot of violence, depravity and vulgarity are shown. Experts believe that the VTsIOM sociologists included an ambiguous concept in their question. "This is VTsIOM's mistake. You must not juggle words that are perceived differently by different groups of the population," Milekhin believes. "From a professional viewpoint, the VTsIOM sociologists are exposing themselves. They included in the question a word that many people in Russia understand differently. If what you imply by "censorship" is some observance of the norms of morality and ethics, limiting the showing of scenes of violence and protecting children from information which harms them, then, of course, the absolute majority will support this. But if they had formulated the question like this  is it necessary to restrict freedom of speech as an expression of different viewpoints on problems that exist?  then the majority would have agreed that censorship is unnecessary," Milekhin told Gazeta.

References: Constitution of the Russian Federation, Article 29, paragraph 5

Viktor N. Monakhov, JD, senior research fellow and professor, Institute of State and Law (Russian Academy of Sciences), UNESCO Chair on Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Rights, April 2008, [ LINK ]

U.S. Department of State report Russia: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2007, [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

Window on Eurasia: Anger about Western Criticism Equally Spread Across Russian Society, Paul Goble, April 2, 2008

Press release from the Committee to Protect Journalists (USA), July 28, 2006, [ LINK ]" target="_blank">[ LINK ]

Russian PM Congratulates Journalists on Professional Holiday, Itar-Tass news agency, January 13, 2008

"Russian state watchdog head comments on Internet, media, extremism," Interfax news agency, March 12, 2008

"Media Clampdown Approved by Duma," Francesca Mereu, Moscow Times daily, April 26, 2008, [ LINK ]" target="_blank">[ LINK ]

"State not to impose censorship in mass media  Russian minister, Interfax news agency, April 22, 2008

"To Slanderers of Russia," Sergey Arkhipov, Izvestia daily (Moscow), April 30, 2008

"A Conspiracy Behind the Rumor?" Sean Guillory, Sean's Russia Blog, May 1, 2008, [ LINK ]" target="_blank">[ LINK ]

Law on Fighting Extremist Activity, Article 1

Press release of the Committee to Protect Journalists (USA), July 28, 2006, http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/76025/

"Russian PM Congratulates Journalists on Professional Holiday," Itar-Tass news agency, Jan. 13, 2008

"Russian state watchdog head comments on Internet, media, extremism," Interfax news agency, March 12, 2008

"Media Clampdown Approved by Duma," Francesca Mereu, The Moscow Times daily, April 26, 2008, http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1010/42/362337.htm

"A Conspiracy Behind the Rumor?" Sean Guillory, Sean's Russia Blog, May 1, 2008, http://seansrussiablog.org

Editorial: "Intimidation of Journalists: Deputies Amend Media Law Without Thinking About Consequences," Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, April 28, 2008

"Russian Union of Journalists Against Proposed Bill Infringing on Media Freedom," Interfax news agency, April 11, 2008

"Russian journalists sued for defamation 3,500 times a year  union leader," RIA-Novosti news agency, June 10, 2008, [ LINK ])

Russia: Restrictive media law amendment moves forward in Duma, Committee to Protect Journalists press-release, May 1, 2008

"Russian Public Chamber against media law amendments," Interfax news agency, May 3, 2008, [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

"Duma Will Not Pass Media Bill," The Moscow Times daily, May 20, 2008, [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

"Medvedev sinks tougher media libel law," Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters, June 2, 2008

"Media Law to Be Extended Without Changes," Viktor Khamrayev, Kommersant daily, June 11, 2008, [ LINK ]

On current developments: [ LINK ]

On new amendments to Law on Media: [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

"Chayka to get more powers," Ivan Rodin, Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily (Moscow), pril 11, 2008

On regional initiatives to amend Law on Media: [ LINK ]

"Don't shoot the journalist," Maxim Krans, RIA Novosti, May 5, 2008

"Russians want media censorship __ poll, Interfax news agency, June 18, 2008

"Poll Truth Must Be Told: 58% of VTsIOM Respondents Want Introduction of Media Censorship," Svetlana Kazantseva, Gazeta.ru news portal, June 19, 2008

How newspapers are punished for inappropriate materials, see here: [ LINK ].

[ LINK ]

Nonetheless, on most subjects, the public continued to have access to a broad spectrum of viewpoints in the print media and, for those with access, on the Internet. Although the government generally respected citizens' rights to freedom of expression, it sometimes restricts this right with regard to issues such as the conduct of federal forces in Chechnya, discussions of religion or controversial reforms in the social sector. Some regional and local authorities took advantage of the judicial system's procedural weaknesses to arrest persons for expressing views critical of the government.

With some exceptions, judges appeared unwilling to challenge powerful federal and local officials who sought to prosecute journalists. These proceedings often resulted in stiff fines. However, new legislation gives the state an opportunity to label criticism of state officials "extremism." On July 28, 2006, President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity. The new legislation allows imprisonment of up to three years for journalists. The same measures apply to a person speaking at a rally. The law went into effect on October 28, 2006. Amendments to Article 1 of the law broaden the definition of extremist activity to include "public slander directed toward figures fulfilling state duties of the Russian Federation," as well as "interfering with the legal duties of organs of state authorities." Such vague language allows public officials to interpret the law as they please and effectively target critics, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sources said.

"This measure is reminiscent of the kind of catchall laws that were used in Soviet times to control the media," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said. "Those in power can now label any journalist an 'extremist' and effectively stifle critical reporting."

Article 29 of the Russian Constitution says: "Everyone has the freedom of thought and speech." There are different types of freedom, namely freedom of speech and freedom of press. Freedom of speech is the citizen's right to be involved in the discussion of anything that matters to him/her. One of the citizen's ways to be heard is via the media. Freedom of the press means the prohibition of the influence and pressure (censorship) on the media by state authorities.

References: Constitution of the Russian Federation, 1993, Chapter 2; Article 29

Press release from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), July 28, 2006

[ LINK ]

Some general information on Russian media: Russias federal press agency has said that at the beginning of last year, Russia had 66,931 registered mass media, including 52,641 printed periodicals. Seslavinsky has remarked that approximately 45 percent of them spring to life only during election campaigns or are published from time to time. The regional press currently accounts for two-thirds of the readership, he said, and the regional versions of federal periodicals increase the likely audience to 80 percent.

References: "Russian journalists celebrate professional holiday," Itar-Tass news agency, Jan. 13, 2007

Mikhail Seslavinsky, Russian press agency chief

According to the Governmental Decree #301, the Federal Service on Supervision of Observance of the Legislation in the Field of Mass Communications and Protection of Cultural Heritage deal with the licenses for the broadcasting organizations in Russia. The Federal Agency of Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation has the authority to register print mass media, which is necessary to start their activity. Thus, there is a licensing mechanism for broadcasting and another registration system for the printed press.

The appeals mechanism is hardly used. The appeals mechanism is directed at the observance of the licensing mechanism and registration system in the event a citizens' or organizations' rights to get the license or registration were violated.

Speaking about the media coverage of the presidential election campaign in January through March 2008, Interfax news agency reported that Boris Boyarskov, head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Mass Communications, Communications and Preservation of Cultural Heritage, said on 12 March that 67 cases of violating electoral law had been discovered, four of which were by audiovisual media. Federal print media did not commit any violations during the election campaign, he said. In addition, 74 warnings were issued to various media for extremist activity, compared with 64 in 2006 and only 28 in 2005, Boyarskov said. Boyarskov added that newspapers Limonka, Generalnaya Liniya and Korpus had been closed on court orders. Another newspaper, Duel, is in the process of being disbanded; the trial on its case has been going on for two years now.

According to Boyarskov, his agency has issued over 500 warnings to media entities since 2004, when the agency was created, mostly to broadcast media entities.

References: Law on Mass Media, Article 61

Governmental Decree #301, 2004

"Russian state watchdog head comments on Internet, media, extremism," Interfax news agency, Moscow, March 12, 2008

Interview with Boris Boyarskov, head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Mass Communications, Communications and Preservation of Cultural Heritage, April 21, 2008, Kommersant daily, [ LINK ]

References: [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

References: [ LINK ].

Telekon consulting agency (Moscow)

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

As part of the broader pattern, the state is paying more attention to international media, especially international broadcasting. Authorities have focused on U.S. governmentfunded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), whose programming provides an alternative news voice to listeners across the country. The Kremlin has undertaken an intimidation campaign against RFE/RL's partners  Russian radio stations that rebroadcast Radio Liberty programs  subjecting them to debilitating harassment. In August, Bolshoye Radio, a Moscow radio station, announced that it would no longer carry the BBC's Russian-language broadcasts. Although technical violations were cited as the official reason for the station's decision to pull the BBC off the air, many condemned the act as censorship.

References: Telekon consulting agency Moscow

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

"Democracy's Façade," by Christopher Walker and Robert Orttung, The Moscow Times daily, Oct. 5, 2007, [ LINK ]

He also said that the newspapers Limonka, Generalnaya Liniya and Korpus had been closed on court orders. Another newspaper, Duel, is in the process of being disbanded; the trial on its case has been going on for two years now.

According to Boyarskov, his agency has issued over 500 warnings to media entities since 2004, when the agency was created, mostly to broadcast media entities.

On May 12, 2008, a new oversight service, called Rossvyazkonmnadzor and headed by Boyarskov, was created.

According to Vedomosti daily publication on Jan. 21, 2009 ([ LINK ]), allocation of radio and TV frequencies is performed by State Frequency Board on a mixed basis - per request and by tender. As a result, this system is considered to be less transparent than it should be and State Frequency Board was once and again of time accused on bias though Mr Andrei Beskorovainy, ex Chairman of Federal Communications Agency that manages the State Frequency Board disagrees claiming that everything was done by the law and in collegial manner. Detailed information on media licensing is available here: [ LINK ].

References: [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

"Russian state watchdog head comments on Internet, media, extremism," Interfax news agency, Moscow, March 12, 2008

Federal Service for Supervision in Mass Communications, Communications and Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Boris Boyarskov, Kommersant daily, April 21, 2008, [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

Peer Review Comments: The same procedure is applied to the broadcast media entities as to the printed media.

References: [ LINK ] and here [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

References: [ LINK ]

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[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

The Internet in general should be considered an influential medium, especially because it provides a forum for free discussion that has become a rarity on the main national television and radio networks.

Masha Lipman, a political expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center, says that Web forums like Live Journal provide an arena for free debate that is no longer available in much of the conventional media.

"There is indeed a lot of free exchange on the Internet," Lipman says. "The problem in Russia is not that there are no outlets where free expression is possible. The problem is that the Kremlin has radically marginalized all outlets that pursue even reasonably independent editorial lines."

Russians are the second-largest group of users of Live Journal (LJ), a popular U.S. blog site. In Russia, the site currently has more than 1.1 million users and 67,500 interest groups. On September 5, 2007, alone, 1600 new Russian users joined Live Journal, and almost 500,000 new comments were posted.

"Actually, I think the Internet is one of the reasons Russia is still not an authoritarian regime, because you cannot really shut down the Internet without very serious measures," says Yulia Latynina, a political commentator whose columns are frequently posted on Live Journal. Most Russians get their news and current affairs from three main television channels, all of which are controlled by the government or state-owned enterprises. A handful of independently owned television and radio stations and a few the national newspapers provide some alternative to the Kremlin's view of events. Lipman says the way the government approaches sites like Live Journal is more sophisticated: "The Kremlin has lots of sites under its control, financed by businesses associated with the Kremlin or that otherwise create an environment in which those more independent ones are easily dissolved," she says. "This dissolution, I think, is one thing that the Kremlin is using to counter or neutralize the potentially stirring effect."

And those Kremlin-backed websites, she says, are often difficult to spot. "It's not that they are necessarily loyal or produce bland propaganda, similar to what you see on television," Lipman says. "They may be critical themselves, but this will be criticism that the Kremlin itself sort of oversees."

So many independent thinkers escape to a virtual space free of vested interests where anonymity goes hand in hand with a worldwide reach: personal online journals or blogs. Today's bloggers follow the tradition of the Soviet dissidents who found an outlet for their opinions in samizdat, the clandestine printing of anti-government material. Alongside debate on government policies, LJ blogs by Masha Gaidar and Ilya Yashin, both well-known leaders of youth liberal political movements, often advertise protests or debates. Unlike more intimate U.S. blogs, Russian cyber-journals often involve thousands of bloggers and focus on issues like politics or literature.

Statistics also indicates that the sites of political parties get from 20,000 to 50,000 visits every day. Political discussions nowadays in Russia unfold in Runet and especially in LJ. Many politicians have opened their web diaries there, as communications on the Web stands in a marked contrast to boring official political speeches.

"The Internet is getting more and more influential, although it still represents far from all sections of Russian society but rather its more advanced part," Novye Izvestia writes, quoting political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin.

More and more people are turning to blogs and Internet forums when seeking reliable information. Russian authorities have been trying to find ways to control the Internet since 2000, when the first informational websites started to appear in the country. However, it is more challenging that shutting down a TV channel or a newspaper. The main reason the Kremlin wants to control the Internet is not to eliminate pornography but rather a fear of the popularity of the Internet among anti-Putin youth organizations. The Putin opposition uses the Internet for propaganda purposes, which makes the Kremlin quite nervous. With enough legal justifications to close websites still lacking, tauthorities instead use hackers to crash the systems at opportune moments.

The Interior Ministry submitted to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, a number of proposals aimed at censorship in the Internet. Konstantin Machabeli, the director of the ministry's department for specialized technologies, told Itar-Tass in October 2007 that the ministry possesses a set of technological capabilities for blocking websites that propagate extremist or terrorist information.

Last but not least, the former director of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolai Patrushev said at a meeting of the National Antiterrorist Committee on June 5, 2007, that control over the Internet is essential. Experts also claim that the efforts to put the Internet under total state control, as in China, are doomed to failure. In China, the government controls the only channel of access to the international Web, while any respectable provider in Russia has several channels of access. Introduction of control will require an overall change of laws, including the Constitution, and a re-division or, rather, toughening of the market of Web services.

The number of Internet users in Russia increased by 40 percent in 2007, according to preliminary estimates, reaching 35 million, Prime Tass, the economic news agency, reported Minister of Information Technologies and Communications Leonid Reiman saying on Feb. 11, 2008. In 2007, the number of computers in use went up by more than 8 million as compared to 2006 and reached 31.2 million units by the end of 2007, Prime Tass said.

According to Reiman's, over 30 percent of Russian families have a computer at home, Prime Tass said.

Most Internet users (55 percent) live in Moscow. Most Russian citizens use the Internet at home: 66 percent.

The Web's influence is in Russia is restricted because access is limited. The phone system is antiquated, meaning connections are slow. Internet service is difficult to find in poorer provinces, and personal computers are still a luxury.

The popularity of the Internet has doubled in Russia over the past three years, although more than half of Russian citizens do not log on, according to a study conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTSIOM). In 2008, 20 percent of Russians turned to the Internet for news as compared to 10 percent in 2007. Sixty-nine percent of the 1600 respondents say they do not use the Internet at all (in 2006, that proportion was 76 percent), while another 11 percent turn to the resources of the global Web every day. Nine percent log on the Web several times per week, 7 percent several times per month and 3 percent no less than once in six months.

The Internet is more popular in big cities than in rural areas. Thus, the number of web users in Moscow and St Petersburg total 41 percent, while in rural areas only 12 percent.

Russia's blogs increasingly serve as alternative sources of information to the mainstream media, which is becoming more restricted in what they can say or write about the Kremlin. But the media crackdown has also been extended to the blogosphere. For example, authorities have already initiated criminal proceedings against several bloggers in a town in the Komi republic and other regional cities on the grounds of inciting interethnic or racial hatred or of extremism, which is defined and interpreted very broadly by law enforcement officials. New legislation makes it possible to label any critical commentary of federal or regional authorities as extremism. The Russian blogosphere is truly becoming more courageous, offering its own take on events as an alternative to the official line. In other words, it is becoming a political liability. More than 20 million Russians actively use the Internet, and of those, 3.5 million actively participate in blogs ¬¬ 2.6 times more than last year.

Russia's blogosphere is more concentrated than in other countries, with 75 percent of all blogs located on one of five web sites: [ LINK ], [ LINK ], [ LINK ], [ LINK ] and http://www. LovePlanet.ru. LiveInternet hosts the most blogs, but no more than 20 percent are updated regularly. More than 7000 new blogs and 210,000 entries appear on the Russian Internet every day. According to Oleg Panfilov, a free press advocate who heads the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, Russian authorities have been wary of the Internet's growing importance for years.

In January 2008, the state made one more attempt to regulate the Internet through legislation. The Federation Council discussed the first draft law "On the Internet" on Jan. 29, at the Information Policy Commission. According to its chairman, Lyudmila Narusova, the main aim of the document is to define the chief areas and regulate "a number of things in the Internet, since in unscrupulous hands this provokes offenses and crimes of various kinds." As examples of such "things," Narusova pointed to child pornography, which is widespread in the Internet, trade in children and instructions on how to assemble explosive substances.

Federation Council Chairman Sergey Mironov also pointed to the need to regulate the Internet. "This sphere must be regulated. At the same time there can be no censorship in the Internet. This is my principled position," Mironov pointed out.

Yuriy Sharandin, head of the Federation Council Constitutional Legislation Committee, in turn remarked that "it is not just possible but necessary to regulate content." Only not to regulate it in advance, as then this would be censorship, but to have punishments for violations of laws  for example, for disseminating pornography and information that incites racial or ethnic discord," Sharandin said.

However, not everything in the document excludes the possibility of the state pressuring the Internet community. The text of the law provides, inter alia, for the creation of a new combined organ of state power "carrying out regulatory functions in the sphere of the development and use of the Internet." According to the text of the law, precisely this organ is authorized to combat crimes committed with the help of the Internet (these functions are now distributed among various security departments) and to draft further legal acts on the working of the Internet.

This is not the first year that the idea of compiling a single law to regulate the Internet has been nurtured in the corridors of power, although previously the matter had been confined to just to a few amendments. Meanwhile, the Internet public gives a hostile reception to any state initiative in this sphere, fearing the introduction of censorship in the Russian segment of the worldwide web. ( It was decided to get back to issue later in the year.

The current draft law, On the Internet, has been developed on request of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly of CIS. It is recommendatory to the Assembly member countries.

Curiously, the term "Internet" has no definition in the legislation. There are no laws defining the terms "Internet," "site" or, for example, "spam" either in Russia or in most CIS countries.

Representatives of the Federation Council, Interior Ministry, Justice Ministry and Public Chamber presented on February 11, 2008, the drafts for "legal control over the Internet." The proposal is to amend mass media laws and register as mass media all websites with a daily audience of at least 1000, which corresponds to Clause 12 of the Mass Media Act imposing such registration on all media with a daily circulation of at least 1000. The initiative is technically non-feasible, the analysts say.

There are now some 5000 websites in the Russian language with an audience of more than 1000 people per day.

Another proposal is to amend the Clause 57 that makes mass media not liable for the release of non-adequate information or slander, should it be word-for-word re-publication of another medium's report.

Slutsker said the changes were necessary because there was no clear-cut definition of Internet mass media in the current press law, which was passed in 1991, three years before the appearance of RuNet. He said the changes would only regulate excesses by online journalists and would not affect blogs, social networking sites or search engines. The effort replicates a similar move in 2005, when Dmitry Frolov, head of the Federal Security Service's Information Security Center, told the Federation Council that authorities deserved broader powers to control telecommunications and the Internet. Under Russian law, senators cannot initiate laws. Any Federation Council member seeking to introduce a bill must go through the relevant Duma committee.

All Internet sites should be registered as mass media outlets, Boris Boyarskov, the chief of the Federal Service for Supervision of Legislation of Mass Communications and Protection of Cultural Heritage (Rossvyazokhrankultury), said on March 12, 2008. "It is the personal business of the site author whether or not to register the website," he said.

At any rate, the website author is responsible for observing the legislation in the work of the web portal, Boyarskov said.

Some Internet entities have already been registered as mass media, but on the whole they do not need official papers to exist.

The chief of the mass communications watchdog noted that the service he heads is not going to introduce any restrictions on the Internet. "The current regulations are quite enough to fight with law violations in the Internet," he said.

Authorities should take a measured approach to policing the Internet, President-elect Dmitry Medvedev said on April 3, 2008, Speaking at the opening of the 12th annual Russian Internet Forum.

Other agencies, Such as the Prosecutor General's Office have sought to control the Internet, but currently, there are no plans to introduce restrictions on the Internet in Russia, head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Mass Communications, Communications and Preservation of Cultural Heritage Boris Boyarskov said on March 12, Interfax news agency reported.

However, a decree from the Information Technologies and Communications Ministry, made public on February 26, 2008, requires all telecommunication companies and ISPs to allow the Federal Security Service (FSB) unrestricted monitoring of all communications: phone calls, text messages and e-mails, so the FSB has unrestricted access to their networks and, consequently, to customers' private data. Departmental order is therefore above the Constitution, which demands a court verdict for eavesdropping (or its analogs).

In Order #6 (January 16, 2008) Minister Leonid Reiman instructs providers to install special equipment linked to and controlled from terminals manned by the FSB. The equipment in question enables secret services to identify senders and addressees, listen to telephone conversations, copy e-mail letters and establish the whereabouts of cell phone users. Moreover, the Federal Security Service chooses these targets entirely on its own, so that providers themselves remain unaware of what customers secret services are interested in at any given moment.

Telecoms and ISPs are also required to install, at their own expense, the equipment allowing the FSB to monitor communications. The equipment costs as much as US$100,000. The decree is related to a program called SORM-2, which was introduced in 1998 to allow the FSB to monitor the Internet.

References: "Russia: Media Clampdown Sees Blogs Flourish," Chloe Arnold, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 10, 2007

"Russian Blogs: Tool for Opposition and State," Robert Orttung, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 28 (Oct. 2, 2007), 2-7, [ LINK ]

Representatives of Rosokhrankultura (Federal Service for Monitoring the Observance of Legislation in the Sphere of Mass Communication and Protection of the Cultural Heritage) in turn declared that they are unable to take any measures with respect to websites organized by the Russkiy Marsh in 2007 and 2008.

Criminal cases opened against Russian users of the Internet under most variegated pretexts become increasingly frequent. The first such case was opened in early April against a reader of an Internet magazine. Savva Terentyev, a man from the city of Syktyvkar in the northeast of Russia, is looking at the prospect of four years in jail after leaving an unflattering remark about policemen. Interior officials considered his words to be insulting speech and instituted a criminal case. He is charged with "inciting hatred or animosity and humiliating human dignity."

Anton Nossik, an acclaimed figure in Russian Internet, sizes up the Terentyev story as a new attempt to impose censorship on the web. "Quite understandably, those people don't like the idea of a free uncontrolled expression of one's thoughts," he told Echo of Moscow.

Local and regional authorities do not censor citizens creating content online, but they prosecute them for it. For example, Kemerovo prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the activities of an opposition activist following allegations that he made offensive comments about law enforcement officers in a blog. The blogger, Dmitry Solovyov, coordinator of the Kemerovo region branch of the Oborona movement, faces up to two years in prison if charged and convicted.

Oborona's Moscow coordinator, Oleg Kozlovsky, said the case was an attempt to intimidate members of the movement, which has regularly participated in rallies staged by opposition coalition The Other Russia. "This is an attempt to put pressure on Oborona, both at the local and federal levels," Kozlovsky said on August 18, 2008. Solovyov is suspected of libeling and inciting hatred against police and Federal Security Service officers in his posts on LiveJournal, Kozlovsky said. He said the Kemerovo regional branch of the Investigative Committee opened the case on Aug. 11 at the request of the FSB's local branch, and that the postings in question were made from December 2006 to June 2008 under the nickname dimon77.

An entry from March, titled "The People in Gray Won't Break Oborona," accuses Interior Ministry and FSB officers of silencing opposition, delivering "unjust verdicts," "beating confessions out" of people, intimidation and committing dissenters to psychiatric asylums.

Solovyov did not author the contents of the March posting but instead quoted a piece by another blogger, citing the original. Examined on Aug. 18, none of the posts in Solovyov's blog referencing the Interior Ministry or FSB contained insulting epithets or incitement to violence.

Andrei Richter, head of Moscow's Media Law and Policy Institute, said the cases of Solovyov and Komi republic blogger Savva Terentyev, who was handed a one-year suspended prison sentence in July for inciting hatred against the police, represented "a dangerous trend."

"People will be afraid to voice their opinions," Richter said. As of Nov.11, 2008, there was no news on Solovyov's case.

Blogger Savva Terentyev was the first journalist to be sentenced for "inciting hatred" under the new Law on Extremism. The 22-year-old was charged in August 2007 with inciting hatred against officials for a February 2007 post on a LiveJournal blog in which he said police officers should be "periodically set on fire" in the main squares of the country's cities. In March 2008, prosecutors in the Komi republic sent the case to court, citing the incendiary blog post about police officers. In July 2008, he was handed a one-year suspended prison sentence.

References: "Russia: Media Clampdown Sees Blogs Flourish," Chloe Arnold, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 10, 2007

"Activist Placed Under Investigation for Blog," Natalya Krainova, The Moscow Times daily, Aug. 18, 2008, [ LINK ]

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It was difficult before July 2006, now it has become dangerous. On July 28, 2006, President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity. The new legislation allows imprisonment of up to three years for journalists. The same measures apply to a person speaking at a rally. The law went into effect on October 28, 2006. Amendments to Article 1 of the law broaden the definition of extremist activity to include "public slander directed toward figures fulfilling state duties of the Russian Federation," as well as "interfering with the legal duties of organs of state authorities." Such vague language allows public officials to interpret the law as they please and effectively target critics, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sources said.

"This measure is reminiscent of the kind of catchall laws that were used in Soviet times to control the media," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said. "Those in power can now label any journalist an 'extremist' and effectively stifle critical reporting."

According to the Law on Mass Media, there are specific grounds for ending the activities of a mass media company: "No provision shall be made for the use of mass media for purposes of committing criminally indictable deeds, divulging information containing a state secret or any other law-protective secret, the performance of extremist activities, and also for the spreading of broadcasts propagandizing pornography or the cult of violence and cruelty." As the "extremism" has the wide interpretation, including "public slander directed towards figures fulfilling the state duties of the Russian Federation or has duties which have the connection with their execution and the fact of slander is established in the court decision," mass media companies can be closed after three warnings.

For instance, in 2007, seven warnings about extremism were issued to mass media; seven warnings were issued during the first ten months of 2008.

Genri Reznik, president of the Moscow Lawyers Bureau, stated that the Strasbourg experience on violations of freedom of speech and self-expression "was late in arriving," and thousands of lawsuits on protection of honor, dignity and business reputation were "smashed" by independent Russian media. (It is surprising that the court even ventures to defend the "business reputation" of a prosecutor or official: By law this applies only to civil-relations entities.) The norm equating slander against the highest officials to extremism is very harmful. Also untenable is the absence of a statute of limitations (measured in months in countries abroad). Reznik recalled that in choosing between the right of protection of individual privacy and the right of society to information, the European Court is increasingly tending to give priority to the latter, and public figures in the West are less protected from criticism than ordinary citizens.

References: [ LINK ].

Law on Mass Media

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"Not into the annalsthen into analysis: Novaya's forecast for political broadcasting," by Nataliya Rostova, Gazeta.ru news website, Sept. 18, 2008

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"A Lack of Confidence in the Judge: Roundtable Conference Presents President Medvedev an Explanation of Why Russians Are Appealing to Strasbourg," Novaya Gazeta, July 3, 2008

Kommersant asked Fedorov who is currently putting the most pressure on the media. He said, Perhaps surprisingly, it is not officials. The media feel the most pressure from "interest groups." This does not necessarily mean oligarchs and businessmen, but it always implies people who are influential in the region.

References: [ LINK ]

Valeriy Fedorov, director of the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion [VTsIOM], Kommersant daily (Moscow)

"Rating of 100 Means Complete Paradise: VTsIOM Director Comments on Methodology Used to Assess Freedom of Speech," Viktor Khamrayev, Kommersant daily, June 11, 2008, [ LINK ]

"The law on the media is not observed in its essence here: I am insisting that there is no freedom of speech on our televisions, and not only on television," Russian Television Academy former President and prominent TV journalist Vladimir Pozner said at a roundtable conference on March 26, 2008.

During the recent parliamentary and presidential election campaigns, there were some absolutely banned things: you cannot talk about this, you cannot show this, and you cannot invite that one.

The information policy that has taken shape in Russia "in fact does not provide for free debate and in fact does not provide for live broadcasts," said Pavel Gusev, chairman of the Public Chamber's Media and Freedom of Speech Commission. He added that the media law had no clauses pertaining to the activity of publishers and media owners. "Not only authorities but also owners put pressure on the media, and we must do something about that," he said.

At a talk show in fall 2007, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail G. Delyagin had some tart words about Vladimir Putin. When the program was later televised, Delyagin was not. Not only were his remarks cut, he was also digitally erased from the show. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily, leaving his disembodied legs in one shot.) Delyagin, it turned out, has for some time resided on the so-called stop list, a roster of political opponents and other critics of the government who have been barred from TV news and political talk shows by the Kremlin.

Ms. Proshutinskaya's program, "The People Want to Know," had been censored before. In an interview, Proshutinskaya conceded that Delyagin had been digitally erased from the program. She said she had been embarrassed by the incident, as well as the one with Ryzhkov, explaining that the network was responsible. The Kremlin had so intimidated the networks, she said, that self-censorship was rampant.

"I would be lying if I said that it is easy to work these days," she said. "The leadership of the channels, are in very lucrative positions and because of their great fear of losing their jobs, they overdo everything."

The management of her network would not comment. But the network's news director, Mikhail A. Ponomaryov, said journalists and hosts of talk shows had no choice but to comply with the rules.

"It would be stupid to say that we can do whatever we want," he said. "If the owner of the company thinks that we should not show a person, as much as I want to, I cannot do it."

Opponents who were on TV a year or two ago all but vanished during the campaigns in 2007 and 2008.

Senior government officials deny the existence of a stop list, saying that people hostile to the Kremlin do not appear on TV simply because their views are not newsworthy. In interviews, journalists said that they did not believe the Kremlin kept an official master stop list but that the networks kept their own, and that they all operated under an informal stop list  an understanding of the Kremlins likes and dislikes.

Vladimir V. Pozner, host of "Times," a political talk show on the top national network, Channel One, said the pressure to conform to Kremlin dictates had intensified over 2007 and had not eased even after the campaign.

"The elections have led to almost a paranoia on the part of the Kremlin administration about who is on television," said Pozner. In practice, he explained, he tells Channel One executives whom he wants to invite on the show, and they weed out anyone they think is a persona non grata. "They will say, 'Well, you know we can't do that; it's not possible. Please, don't put us in this situation.' You can't invite so and so, whether it be Kasparov or Kasyanov or someone else.

Vladimir R. Solovyov, another political talk show host, said Pozner was complaining only because his ratings were down and he was looking for someone to blame if his program was canceled. Solovyov, a vocal supporter of Putin, said he had never been bullied by the Kremlin. Yet last year, his show, "Throw Down the Gauntlet," regularly featured members of opposition parties. This year, the only politicians to appear have been leaders of Mr. Putin's party, United Russia, and an allied party. Asked why he had not invited opposition leaders lately, Solovyov said, "No one supports them. They have nothing to say."

"At present, the main problem is the state taking over the media. The state should, not just in words but in reality, leave the media market," Yuri Yakovenko, general secretary of the Russian Journalistic Union, said on Feb. 15, 2008.

The financial crisis has its toll on Russian media in a curious way. The editor of a Russian Internet news portal accused authorities on Nov. 19, 2008, of censoring bad news about the financial crisis after prosecutors questioned journalists reporting on troubled banks. Sverdlovsk regional prosecutors said they had been ordered to monitor for signs of "information attacks" on banks after reports of liquidity problems sparked a run on several local banks last month.

The inquiry followed a speech by President Dmitry Medvedev earlier that month in which he urged law enforcement agencies to prosecute anyone maliciously spreading rumors that could cause banks to collapse.

Aksana Panova, editor of the Internet publication www.ura.ru, based in the regional capital, Yekaterinburg, said a prosecutor had summoned her for questioning about her sources of information. Rimma Bobina, an official in the local prosecutor's office, said investigators would also be following what other media report.

"An investigation is under way into cases of information attacks, via the Internet, on credit institutions in Yekaterinburg," Bobina said. "We are conducting daily monitoring of all media."

References: Glasnost Defense Foundation President Alexei Simonov on the International Freedom of Exchange website, [ LINK ]

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"First Blacklist of Literature is Released," Moscow Times daily, July 17, 2007

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"There Is No Freedom of Speech in Russia Media  Prominent Journalists," March 27, 2008, Interfax news agency

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"It Isn't Magic: Putin Opponents Are Made to Vanish From TV," Clifford J. Levy, The New York Times, June 3, 2008, [ LINK ]

"State should leave Russia's media market  Union of Journalists," RIA-Novosti news agency, Feb. 15, 2008

"Journalist Accuses Prosecutors of Censoring Crisis Coverage," The Moscow Times daily, Nov. 20, 2008, [ LINK ]

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Peer Review Comments: Since newly elected president Dmitri Medvedev announced that fighting corruption would be one of his main tasks, there appears to be more information printed on that issue. However, there is a general belief that it is being covered up.

Peer Review Comments: There is no pre-publication censoring in Russia. However, the state influences the editorial line of the media it owns, directly or indirectly,( i.e. nearly all television stations). The state also exerts pressure on the media (including newspapers) who publish corruption-related stories critical of state figures. But pressure occurs only after publication,(i.e. through libel suits or tax raids). This pressure is heavy and may be rather effective.

Prof. Fedotov, one of the authors of the Law on Mass Media, suggested an amendment according to which the concept of "ownership of mass media" should be introduced to the law, as the founder could be also an owner of mass media.

Bank Rossiya, whose largest shareholder is Yury Kovalchuk, a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is gathering television channels Ren-TV and St. Petersburg-based Channel 5 under a single holding called National Media Group. Bank Rossiya, steelmaker Severstal, oil firm Surgutneftegaz and insurance group Sogaz will pool the 68 percent of Ren-TV and 72 percent of Channel 5 they currently control.

Lyubov Sovershayeva, the head of Bank Rossiya unit Abros, will head the new company, National Media Group said. He has chaired the board at Ren-TV since 2006, the board of Petersburg TV and Radio Company and is the owner of Channel 5 since last year.

The statement also said Bank Rossiya, which currently owns a 38 percent stake in Channel 5 through Abros, will initially have a controlling stake in the holding and that other media assets, including daily newspaper Izvestia, may also be included in the new holding. The founders of the National Media Group are uniting their media assets "with a view to making the channels more competitive and their management more efficient," the statement said. The group would be "guided by the need" to educate young people and to establish "efficient information exchange among the public, business and the authorities."

Meanwhile, the Russian government is against allowing foreign investors to own Russian media.

References: Law on Mass Media, Article 10

"Putin Ally Puts TV Channels into National Media Holding," The Moscow Times daily, Feb. 18, 2008, [ LINK ]

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Prof. Fedotov, one of the authors of the Law on Mass Media, suggested an amendment, according to which the concept of "ownership of mass media" should be introduced into the law, as the founder could be also an owner of mass media.

References: Law on Mass Media, Article 10

Federal publications allow themselves to express individual opinions that diverge in this way or that from the official government view, but they do so politely and shyly that they hardly make a ripple. Our research has shown that up to 70 percent of material printed in the press or broadcast on TV and radio is about the government and its representatives."

There is a difference between professional practices and state interference, as the latter is not the only restriction to professional practices. First and foremost, professional practices refer to reliability of information and unbiased presentation. Russia, as all market economies, has lots of tabloid newspapers, which do not adhere to professional practices for commercial reasons. Second, most newspapers  but not all  tend to be rather uncritical of the government. Whether this is a lack of professional practices depends on the point of view. In any case, newspapers like Vedomosti have critical views but present them in a rather dry way, not out of politeness but as a question of style, which is not unusual for newspapers aiming at a well-educated readership. The situation is different with television stations, where closeness to the government obviously conflicts with professional practices.

A few news websites; a shrinking pool of independent newspapers, all with limited circulations; and a sole radio station, Ekho Moskvy, are almost the only remaining outlets for independent news and public dissent.

New media magnates, most notably Alisher Usmanov, Arkadiy Gaydamak, Oleg Deripaska, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Grigoriy Berezkin, and Konstantin Remchukov, are buying up media and announcing plans to create media empires. Most are clearly pro-government and eager to curry favor with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Some (Gaydamak) already have made their media pro-government; others (Usmanov and Deripaska) have appeared to leave the editorial policy of their media alone, at least for the time being.

Sergei Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, which is closely linked to the Kremlin, defended the Kremlin's policies toward the media. "In these conditions in Russia, with our weak and fragile political parties," he said, "television is a nuclear weapon. And now people say it would be good if different people could use this weapon. But that is threatening. True, television management does not want to have problems, so they have gotten rid of all politics from television, leaving only entertainment."

Some diversity of perspective exists in print media at the national level, which are privately owned. Ownership of regional print media is less diverse and often concentrated in the hands of local authorities. Private owners of media outlets are generally billionaire business magnates or large companies like the state-controlled energy conglomerate Gazprom, which holds majority stakes in the newspaper Izvestia and radio station Ekho Moskvy. However, the law requires little transparency in media ownership, and media watchdogs expressed concern in 2006 that companies like Gazprom would purchase additional newspapers, such as Komsomolskaya Pravda.

State control or influence over almost all media outlets remains a serious concern, particularly as it affects the political landscape and Russians' ability to make informed electoral choices. Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of the Russian Journalists Union, blames all these negative evaluations on the authorities' reluctance to set up the legislative and economic conditions necessary for independence of the media. "We have great laws that defend journalists and their rights, but they are enforced and honored only in the capital," Fedotov said. "Regional authorities never miss a single chance  or petty excuse  to do away with an independent media outlet. Besides, it is regional authorities themselves that usually finance local newspapers and TV networks."

The evidence suggests that planting stories, long practiced in Russia, is becoming even more widespread. Whether they like it or not, journalists, elected officials, business people and public relations executives are locked in a corrupt cycle that most think they can't break. The inevitable result is TV news barely fit to watch and newspapers unfit to read.

Prior to March 2, 2008 presidential election, surveys demonstrated that on average more than 80 percent of Russians supported the policies of the departing leader, Vladimir Putin, and 65 percent voted for his United Russia Party in the December parliamentary elections.

One of the major tools for achieving such public consolidation in Russia was imposing government control over the major media. The bulk of the Russian population gets its news from Russian television, which broadcasts mostly upbeat news about the country and its leaders. Russian television constantly broadcasts the image of Russia as a rapidly developing country that is implementing reforms in health, education, housing and industry, led by a corruption-fighting government. The news also presents Russia as a world leader in international politics and economy. Viewers see Russian officials who care about problems and are working to overcome them.

The main newspapers and news websites are little different, projecting pro-Kremlin news and commentary. These include Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moskovsky Komsomolets, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and strana.ru, lenta.ru and regnum.ru. In contrast, a number of independent news websites, which Russians collectively call Runet, provide much more reliable information. Newsru.com is one of the leading independent news sources in Russia today. The site provides news in the fields of politics, social life, economics, sports, culture, religion, technology, travel and entertainment. The site also offers video content. Other sites, such as InoPressa.ru and Zagolovki.ru, provide links to important international media with news about Russia. Gazeta.ru, grani.ru, polit.ru, and utro.ru also provide quality and independent sources of news. Some daily newspapers  Kommersant, Novye Izvestia and Vedomosti  offer a good standard of journalism in both print and online versions.

Independent radio broadcasts are also available online. The site of one of the best and most independent news sources, Echo Moskvy, provides news in text and audio formats, giving users access to opinion by and interviews with the best Russian journalists, political scientists, and writers.

Besides the best journalists, Echo Moskvy is one of the few Russian media companies to interview opposition politicians and human rights activists whose voices are rarely heard in the pro-government media. Moreover, Echo Moskvy regularly invites foreign political and cultural celebrities visiting Moscow.

Some foreign-owned media also broadcast news in Russian. One of the most popular, the news channel Euronews, runs nightly and in the mornings on one of the federal TV channels, and 24 hours a day on pay TV and the Internet. Although Euronews has no exclusive coverage of Russia, it broadcasts in-depth reports about European affairs and the news of the rest of the world.

Foreign radio broadcasters offering 24-hour news and commentary are Svoboda (Radio Liberty), which is financed by the U.S. government, and the BBC Russian service. Many Russians regard these stations' websites as reliable news sources.

Along with Internet news resources, many Russian viewers also have access the major worldwide television news channels such as CNN, BBC World and CNBC. The Russian public, however, instinctively tends to trust domestic more than foreign media.

Despite the range of media, a wide range of information about life in this vast country is still not accessible. Certain geographical and subject areas are barely covered. Most Russians living outside of the north Caucasus have little knowledge about this turbulent region. Life in Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan differs significantly from Central Russia. Armed clashes, kidnapping and cruel human rights violations happen there every day, but often go unreported. The federal forces "victories" over "terrorists" and Chechnya's return to stability following the 1994-1996 and 1999-2000 military campaigns is about the only thing that the pro-government media report on the north Caucasus.

The independent voices (for instance, Caucasian Knot, Chechnya.ru and the Chechenskoye obschestvo newspaper) provide more information on the region, but to get a full picture of life in the northern Caucasus is still impossible: Independent reporting from this region is dangerous and journalists who practice it are persecuted. Coverage of Russian officials' corruption, political opposition and human rights violations is highly restricted in the pro-government media as well.

The biweekly Novaya Gazeta, as well as human rights web wire Prima-news.ru, try to report on these subjects, but they have limited resources and face official barriers. Novaya Gazeta is a leader in investigative journalism, but it has paid a high price for its intrepid work: Three of the newpaper's journalists, Anna Politkovskaya, Igor Domnikov and Yuri Shchekochikhin , have been slain since 2003.

In Russia today, those who want to get a clearer picture of domestic politics and current affairs must develop critical thinking skills and try to combine information from various media. That is difficult to do for most Russians, as the Internet is such an important source of independent reporting.

References: Freedom of Press 2008: [ LINK ]

Presentation by Alexei Simonov, founder and the head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Russia

"Russia: Pressure Mounting on Opposition, Media," Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, April 24, 2007

"Freedom of the Press 2008," report on Russia by Freedom House, April 29, 2008

A report from the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations said that then First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev got fully half of the time devoted to politics in nightly newscasts during the run-up to the last election. "Most of this coverage amounts to propaganda," group head Oleg Panfilov said at a news conference. "It was exclusively positive or neutral in tone. Putin himself got less than 40 percent of the time, whereas the most time devoted to any of Medvedev's rivals was 6 percent, said the report, which was based on monitoring nationwide TV channels' broadcasts between Jan. 10 and Feb. 1, 2008.

Panfilov said television newscasts were not governed by the election law that stipulates equal and free airtime be given to presidential candidates. Medvedev's rivals were given spots for running their announcements in early morning or after midnight, Panfilov said. He said that Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov received about 6 percent of mostly neutral television coverage, while Andrei Bogdanov, the obscure leader of a little-known party, and flamboyant ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky were each given 2 to 3 percent.

Since Putin came to power in 1999, nationwide television channels have come under state control. One independent radio station retains nationwide reach. Independent-minded newspapers are largely limited to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Official perception is different. The election campaign of all four candidates for the Russian presidency on the whole receives rather equal coverage in the media, Chairman of the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) Vladimir Churov said at a press conference. The CEC chief recalled that the "election legislation separates the activities of a person occupying a state post and as a presidential candidate." Churov stressed that three out of the four candidates occupied state posts andthat "their activities on the posts are also reported" in the media.

The CEC chairman cited data from two monitoring studies according to which each of the candidates got a roughly equal number of mentions in the press. "None of them enjoys noticeable preference," the CEC head noted.

Churov does not link the frequent appearance of then First Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on television information program with the election campaign. "If this takes place, it is caused rather by program statements made by the Russian president," according to the CEC chairman. Churov also stressed that the "the work activity of the government headed by Viktor Zubkov has really intensified, and citizens share the view that the government should not decrease its activity during the election period."

Three federal television channels and three radio stations, namely Channel One, Rossiya and TV-Tsentr, and the radio stations Mayak, Radio of Russia and Voice of Russia each gave presidential candidates free time to deliver their campaign speeches. Each television network or radio station assigned seven hours for the election campaign. So federal television channels granted 42 hours of airtime for canvassing. About half of this free airtime was intended for some debates between the candidates.

References: Various publications and reports by Russian media, political parties, polling agencies, NGOs and experts

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How political parties were covered by the media in mid-October 2008, after the parliamentary campaign was officially announced: "Phone-In to Every Leader! Party Bosses Demand Access to the Airwaves in Line with the Example of the No. 1 on the United Russia List," Vladimir Razuvayev Jr., Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Oct. 24, 2007

"Ruling, Opposition Parties Get Equal Attention In Mass Media  Churov," Interfax news agency, Sept. 13, 2007

This picture is radically at odds with the results of joint research done by the Center for Extreme Journalism and a Slovakian public organization, MEMO 98, which specializes in press monitoring. In January and February 2008, they monitored five Russian television networks (Channel One, Rossiya, TV Center, NTV and Ren-TV). The media unit analyzed primetime news programs, assessing and producing findings on the time allocated to all candidates running in the March 2 presidential elections, as well as the time allocation given to the President Putin. The tone of the coverage was also evaluated. Quantitative analysis measured the total amount of time devoted to election contestants and the president on news programs. Qualitative analysis evaluates the tone in which the monitored subjects have been portraye: positive, neutral or negative.

According to the report, state broadcasters failed comprehensively to meet their legal obligation to create equal conditions for all candidates by demonstrating clear bias in favor of Dmitry Medvedev, both in tone and in amount of coverage. Private broadcaster NTV showed a similar pattern of political favoritism to that of state broadcasters, whereas Ren TV offered a more balanced coverage of the candidates and President Putin.

Much of Medvedev's coverage was while he was on a tour of the Russian regions as first deputy prime minister, a practice the groups criticized as indirect campaigning paid for by the state.

"Neither the president nor the prime minister are being given the coverage this bureaucrat is getting," said Russian election monitoring agency Golos analyst Alexander Kynev. "He is not campaigning as a candidate but as an already elected head of state."

The Communist Party and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) joined forces to fight state television channels, which, they said were giving uneven coverage to their candidates, Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, respectively. Duma members sent an inquiry to Vladimir Churov, chairman of the Central Elections Commission (CEC), demanding that the commission respond to the predominance of United Russia Party candidate Dmitry Medvedev in state television campaign coverage. Thirty Duma members from the Communist Party and LDPR signed the he enquiry. The seven-page document details campaign coverage on Channel One, Rossiya and TVTs and shows that the campaign actions of Medvedev received 85.1 percent of the coverage. Zhirinovsky received 7.2 percent, Zyuganov 5.3 percent and candidate Andrey Bogdanov received 2.4 percent. The authors of the enquiry say that those facts call "into question the legitimacy of all the election campaign as a whole."

Mikhail Kasyanov, who was later denied registration as a presidential candidate, Had complained earlier to the CEC about the fact that paid political announcements were charged on the basis of ratings points and not by the minute. That complaint was not considered by the CEC. The Communists have complained during other elections as well. In response, one television station voluntarily gave time for Zyuganov and his advisers on a non-political talk show.

On Feb. 25, 2008 the Court ruled there was no violence of election law.

References: MEMO 2008 report, [ LINK ]

"TV Coverage of Candidates Protested," Maria-Luiza Tirmaste, Kommersant daily, Feb. 14, 2008, [ LINK ]

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Panfilov welcomed a recent ruling by the Strasbourg Court in which it acknowledged that three Russian journalists  Viktor Chemodurov, who was earlier found guilty of insulting Kursk Governor Alexander Rutskoi after several years of judicial hearings, and Viktor Dyuldin and Alexander Kislov, who were found guilty of insulting Penza authorities in their open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin  were unlawfully held for liable.

Elaborating on prosecutions of journalists in Russia, Panfilov also pointed out that previously they had mainly been charged with libel, but "in the last half a year, journalists have been actively accused of extremism. This is exactly what we were afraid of when the legislation on countering extremism was being adopted," he said.

Reporters investigating corruption in Russia are to be protected by a new law. Under new legislation, they'll be able to apply for special protection, as do court witnesses. The law will come into effect by the beginning of 2009. A new national plan to fight corruption, which President Dmitry Medvedev released in late 2008, includes providing state protection for reporters investigating corruption.

On January 13, 2008, the President of the Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF), Aleksey Simonov, told the Interfax news agency: "Last year in the Russian Federation, the GDF registered 1502 conflicts affecting journalists and the mass media." The Interfax news agency was told that over the past eight years, a greater number of conflicts was only registered in 2002, 1540. In 2006, for example, there were 1345 such conflicts; in 2005, 1322.

There were eight cases of the death of journalists among the accidents that happened last year.

The GDF also noted that 75 cases of attacks on journalists, 11 cases of attacks on editorial offices and 33 instances of censorship were registered in 2007, and 46 journalists and mass media outlets were subjected to criminal prosecution. "Some 220 lawsuits amounting to more than 231million rubles (US$7 million) were instituted against journalists and the mass media; 124 of them were heard, 64 were granted and more than 5.6 million rubles (US$172,000) were collected as monetary compensation for moral damages," the foundation noted.

According to the foundation's information, in 2007 there were also 238 cases of journalists being refused access to information, including a ban on carrying out audio and video recording and photography, and refusal of accreditation. "There were 92 cases of confiscation of print runs; this is more than three times more than in any other year since 2000," the agency's source noted.

There are other ways besides physical harm to stop an investigative journalist from reporting on his/her findings, for example, by stopping a journalist from entering the country. Natalya Morar, an investigative journalist who reported that the Kremlin maintained secret funds to finance political parties, was refused entry to Russia at Domodedovo Airport on Feb. 27, 2008, after border guards said she was a threat to national security. An unidentified law enforcement official said she had been added to a government blacklist, RIA-Novosti reported.

Morar said her imminent deportation was "without doubt" linked to an article she wrote in the magazine claiming the Kremlin secretly financed friendly parties during the fall State Duma election campaign. The article named Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Sobyanin and Vladislav Surkov, his deputy, as the controllers of the funds.

Morar first heard about the decision to blacklist her on Dec. 16, 2008, after returning from a vacation in Israel. Federal Security Service officials informed her of the "undesirability of her presence in Russia" and ordered her out of the country, she said. Foreign Ministry sources told RIA-Novosti \that Morar was listed as persona non grata and therefore banned.

Another way to stop journalists from performing their professional duties is to accuse them of using pirated software, as this is a criminal offense. Nineteen criminal cases were opened against journalists on charges of using unlicensed software between July 2007 and March 2008, according to the Russian Union of Journalists 's data.

Activists for the defense of journalists' rights said the use of pirated software by Russian mass media was widespread because the media outlets couldn't afford to buy licensed programs. As a result, it is a convenient pretext on which the authorities can persecute news outlets offering critical coverage. "I am sure that over a half of all Russian mass media offices use pirated software," Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

One journalist familiar with this problem is Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, former editor of Novaya Gazeta in Samara, who is currently on trial for using pirated software in his newspaper's office. Police raided the Nizhny Novgorod and Samara offices of Novaya Gazeta, an outspoken opposition newspaper, in search of pirated software last year, confiscating office computers and paralyzing the papers' work.

Unlicensed copies of programs such as Microsoft Office are on sale at outdoor markets and kiosks throughout the country, at a fraction of the price of authentic copies. Microsoft has announced that it will sell its software to less wealthy media outlets at discount prices in an effort to help them avoid pressure from the authorities based on the possession and use of pirated programs. The move is part of a joint project between Microsoft Rus and the Russian Union of Journalists to achieve greater transparency and prevent persecution of the media. Microsoft Rus spokesman Yevgeny Danilov called this a "nonprofit project" for Microsoft, which he said had its own reasons for trying to help the media. "Our main interest with the project is to see that the newspapers that are published today be still published tomorrow, because we read them," Danilov said.

In February 2008, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) presented its latest report titled "Attacks on The Media (2007)". At least 65 journalists were murdered worldwide in the line of duty, almost half of them in Iraq. The state of affairs for freedom of expression in Russia was castigated as unacceptable.

CPJ, an international non-governmental organization with headquarters in New York, has been drafting these reports for years. Authors of the report analyzed the situation in Russia and point out that the recent parliamentary campaign included "certain events disturbing for the media and civil society." CPJ experts are convinced that media outlets and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with the temerity to criticize the regime are put under pressure or closed altogether. "Russian authorities made use of the charges of extremism and bureaucratic means of punishment," the report stated. Still, the authors did comment on "certain progress" made in investigation of assassinations of Igor Domnikov, Yuri Schekochikhin and Anna Politkovskaya (all of them Novaya Gazeta journalists).

CPJ analysts also commented on the new trends in the relationship between the powers-that-be and the media. "Regional authorities used fabricated charged in connection with copyright violations or the use of piratical software to shut down independent or oppositionist media outlets on the eve of elections," experts said. The report made references to Sergei Kurt-Adjiyev, the Novaya Gazeta (Samara) editor charged with the use of unlicensed software. As for assassinations, the CPJ report only mentions the death of Ivan Safronov, military observer of Kommersant.

According to the Glasnost Protection Foundation, eight journalists including Safronov perished in Russia in 2007. "They mostly concentrate on whatever deaths foment scandals or whatever, while a great number of journalists killed in the provinces are never even mentioned," Glasnost Protection Foundation President Aleksei Simonov said. On the other hand, data always differ depending on the criteria used by the compiling organization. Reporters Without Frontiers, for example, claims that 86 journalists were killed in 2007, while the International Journalistic Organization compiled a list of 100 (but this structure does not differentiate between journalists and their assistants).

In any event, specialists tend to agree with CPJ's conclusions on the state of affairs with freedom of expression in Russia. "They say true," Igor Yakovenko, General Secretary of the Russian Journalistic Union, said. "Most media outlets accepted the rules of the game forced on them by the authorities. By and large, there is nobody left to apply pressure to. Most journalists are trying to revert to the double-think practiced in the Soviet Union," Yakovenko said.

Simonov agrees that journalists in Russia gave in. "Freedom of expression exists only in several newspapers, one radio broadcaster and one program on REN-TV channel," Simonov said. "All others play one and the same tune."

Since 2007, the Law on Extremism has been actively used to silence and/or prosecute journalists. For example, a Perm journalist has been questioned by local prosecutors and may face criminal charges after he penned an article identifying what he characterized as positive similarities between President Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler.

Igor Averkiyev, 47, editor of the newspaper Lichnoye Delo, was summoned to the city's Leninsky District Prosecutor's Office on Feb. 19, 2008, to answer questions about an article called "Putin Is Our Good Hitler," published in the newspaper Za Cheloveka in December 2007. The story compares the eight years of Putin's rule to the early years of Hitler's rule in Nazi Germany. Averkiyev wrote that "like Hitler, Putin is the savior of the Fatherland, the guardian of greatness, stability and order," who also "safeguards the country from enemies, both foreign and domestic." During the campaign leading up to December's 2007 State Duma elections, Averkiyev claimed, Putin "tried on the mantle of 'national leader,' thus practically making a claim to absolute power in Russia, unlimited by elections, parliaments or constitutions  limited only by the leader's personal ambition and the people's for him."

References: Glasnost Defense Foundation survey

Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations reports

One example of such prosecution is illustrative. On October 22, a regional court of Saratov, a major city on Volga river, found guilty on the charge of libel Vladimir Spiryagin, editor-in-chief of Saratovski Rasklad, a local newspaper. He was accused of publishing on August 9, 2007, an article about Vyacheslav Volodin, Secretary General of Edinaya Rossiya party and member of Parliament. The article claimed that Volodin allegedly wounded a local woman while hunting. The editor was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and made to pay a fine. "In Saratov, an editor of a local newspaper was indicted for libel," Kommersant daily, Oct. 22, 2007, [ LINK ].

However, prosecution against journalists backfires sometimes.

"Russian Journalists Fated to Appeal to Strasbourg Court More Often  CJES Head," Interfax news agency, Aug. 2, 2007

"New law protects journalists," July 22, 2008, [ LINK ]

"Russian NGO says journalists' work becoming more dangerous and difficult," Interfax news agency, Jan. 13, 2008

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Sometimes attackers are caught and prosecuted: [ LINK ]

"Critical Journalist Stopped at Airport," David Nowak, The Moscow Times daily, Feb. 28, 2008, [ LINK ]

"Domodedovo Limbo for Barred Journalist," David Nowak, The Moscow Times daily, Feb. 29, 2008, [ LINK ]

"Microsoft Cuts Software Prices for Some Media," Natalya Krainova, The Moscow Times daily, April 7, 2008, [ LINK ]

On Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev's case: [ LINK ]

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"Tragic Count," Yevgenia Zubchenko, Novye Izvestia daily (Moscow), Feb. 5, 2008, [ LINK ]

Peer Review Comments: There is a likely link between corruption-related investigations and imprisonment with enough cases listed to justify the score.

According to the Glasnost Defense Foundation's official data, over 50 journalists in Russia were assaulted in 2008; two have disappeared without trace. Five newspaper offices have been attacked and vandalized.

Law enforcement agencies will recognize that an attack on a journalist may be directly linked to the journalist's occupation only if the journalist was on an authorized mission. In every other case, they hasten to come up with some other explanation, usually unrelated to the occupation of and indirectly compromising the victim.

Authorities are harassing Novaya Gazeta's correspondents in the regions. A criminal case also reached the court, this time, in Omsk. Novaya Gazeta's correspondent Georgiy Borodyanskiy has been accused of assaulting a man, who attacked Borodyanskiy first. Here is one telling detail: The provocation coincided with a business trip the correspondent took. On Feb. 15, 2008, he was going to photograph the dachas of the region's elite. The person who started the fight already admitted that he thought the correspondent was "someone else." In short, he made a mistake. This has not stopped the judicial proceedings.

The preliminary hearing was held on March 19. The judge, A.V. Bezverkhaya, explained that Borodyanskiy was charged with violating Section 116 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (assault) pursuant to the preliminary findings in the forensic report the plaintiff had submitted to the court. So far, medical personnel had confirmed a bump on Romanyuk's leg. The "victim's" reported ligament sprain and "concussion" were still to be substantiated.

According to Igor Yakovenko, secretary-general of Russian Union of Journalists, officials in Omsk did not like the idea of an investigative journalism piece on the location of the regional leaders' dachas in the conservation zone, so arrangements were made for a provocative act by the police against Borodyanskiy.

As a result, some journalists are fleeing the country. The most famous recent case of a journalist being attacked for his reporting on corruption is Michail Beketov, editor and owner of Khimkinskaya Pravda, a weekly in the town on Moscow's northern outskirts. He was brutally assaulted by unidentified assailants in an attack his colleagues said was linked to his criticism of local authorities' deforestation plans. After laying unconscious in his garden for almost two days, he was discovered, bloodied and unconscious, on Nov. 15, 2008. Beketov had repeatedly told friends that he had received threats "from criminals" over his newspaper's critical articles about plans by the Khimki city administration to fell swathes of trees in the Khimki Forest. His car had been set on fire. In summer 2008, he returned home to discover his dog lying dead on his doorstep. The Khimki administration is accused by many of being behind the attack.

Beketov is in coma, and his leg was amputated.

"To be a journalist in Russia is suicide. It's suicide if you talk about truth," says Vladimir Yurov, a colleague and friend of Beketov's. Yurov, the editor of another independent Khimki newspaper, has been attacked three times. On the latest occasion, thugs stabbed him 10 times. He survived. "The prosecutor wasn't interested," he says, adding: "I'm still working."

References: [ LINK ]

Editorial" :The Fourth Estate is Vulnerable," Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, Nov.17, 2008)

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"Russian Opposition Paper Complains of Harassment in Region, text of report, Novaya Gazeta March 24, 2008, BBC Monitoring

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"To be a journalist in Russia is suicide," Luke Harding, The Guardian, Nov. 24, 2008, [ LINK ]

"Editor Brutally Assaulted In Khimki," Svetlana Osadchuk, The Moscow Times daily, Nov. 17 2008, [ LINK ]

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Chaika claims the masterminds behind Politkovskaya's assassination were living outside of Russia and that the murder was part of a plot to discredit President Vladimir Putin and destabilize the country in the run-up to national elections. Sokolov noted that Chaika's comments nearly exactly echoed a statement made by Putin shortly after Politkovskaya's death. At the time, Putin claimed that "people who are hiding from Russian law enforcement have been hatching plans to sacrifice someone and create an anti-Russian wave in the world."

The prosecutor general didn't name names when referring to the Kremlin's alleged foreign enemies, but he appeared to be referring to one person: Boris Berezovsky. According to Chaika, the murder of Politkovskaya could have been related to two previous crimes of similar magnitude: the murders of Central Bank executive Andrei Kozlov last year and of Forbes Russia editor Paul Khlebnikov in 2004. Chaika said the suspects belonged to a gang specializing in this sort of crime.

According to Vsevolod Bogdanov, chairman of the Russian Journalistic Union, 80 percent of murders in Russia are solved eventually. Yet only 20 percent of murders of journalists are solved. There is not a region in Russia where a journalist wasn't killed or physically harmed because of his professional duties.

According to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report Deadly News, released in February 2008, in 2002, 25 journalists were killed in Russia; in 2006, 16 died violent deaths; in 2007, four were murdered. Of this number, monitors believe that 13 died because of their work.

According the Russia's own media monitors, the Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF), founded 1991, and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) founded in 2000, there were eight contract killings of journalists in Russia. Those behind the eight contract killings have never been brought to trial. A prominent recent case confirms this deplorable pattern.

In 2000, Igor Domnikov was beaten so badly in the entrance hall of his Moscow apartment block that he died in the hospital two months later, without regaining consciousness. In August 2007, his killers were sentenced to long prison terms, but the man identified as having ordered and paid for the attack was not put on trial.

Finally, there are eight deaths whose cause is still "unconfirmed," partly through lack of serious investigation, although suspicions remain strong.

The death of Moscow journalist Ivan Safronov in 2007, for instance, was firmly linked by his newspaper to his investigation of arms deals. An attempt to open any criminal investigation, even by invoking Article 110 of the Criminal Code (incitement to suicide), was rejected by the law enforcement agencies.

An ambiguous institutional change subsequently offered a dim hope of renewed activity. In September 2007, the instigation and investigation of criminal cases ceased to be among the duties of the prosecutor general's office. These cases were entrusted to a new investigative committee, headed by Vladimir Putin's fellow law student from Leningrad University, Alexander Bastrykin. Ostensibly still part of the prosecutor general's office, the committee became a rival to the most powerful law enforcement agency in the land. There were certain immediate gestures. The Domnikov files were re-opened to consider whether to take up the demands of his family, his newspaper and lawyers that the person who ordered the fatal beating also be brought to trial. The committee decided to re-open the investigation into the suspicious circumstances of Yury Shchekochikhin's death.

References: Chechen Trace Led to the Police, by Sergei Mashkin, Yuri Syun and Olga Allenova, Kommersant, Aug. 28, 2007

Interview with Vsevolod Bogdanov, chairman of the Russian Journalistic Union, Novye Izvestiya daily (Moscow), Feb. 6, 2008, [ LINK ]

"Barometers of Freedom," John Crowfoot, Spring 2008