Russia Raids Media Company Critical of Kremlin

Just four days after President Vladimir V. Putin’s inauguration, police commandos wearing ski masks and carrying automatic weapons raided Russia’s largest independent media company Thursday in a move widely seen as an attempt to silence criticism of the Kremlin.

The Media-Most company runs Russia’s only independent national TV network, NTV, which has angered the Kremlin with a number of its programs, including investigations targeting the security services and a satirical puppet show poking fun at political leaders.

The raid “reeks of a provocation, a provocation against independent mass media,” said former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. “It is very serious.”

“It is a demonstration of force,” said Oleg Mironov, Russia’s human rights commissioner. “I think it undermines the prestige of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. . . . He is the guarantor of the constitution, the guarantor of rights and freedoms of man and citizen. He must use all his power to prevent a retreat from democratic achievements.”

Government officials said the raid was conducted in connection with criminal investigations of banking irregularities and violations of secrecy laws.

“This is not an attack on journalism. This is not an attack on freedom of expression,” insisted Alexander A. Zdanovich, spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s main successor.

But in Russia, where the media are public battlegrounds for sparring politicians and oligarchs, few people--even among Kremlin allies--were convinced by that explanation.

“What is happening today to NTV is an act of public intimidation,” said former Prime Minister Sergei V. Kiriyenko, leader of a pro-Kremlin political party. “There is growing suspicion that this act of intimidation may have been prompted by dissatisfaction with the channel’s information policy. This is extremely dangerous, even if it is not true.”

Media-Most has had run-ins with the Kremlin before, including a similar raid in 1994. Media-Most Chairman Vladimir A. Gusinsky is one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs, and one of the few who chooses to challenge the Kremlin.

In recent months, Media-Most has argued over debt payments with one of its largest creditors, the state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom. Media-Most officials acknowledge that the company is $200 million in debt but are working to raise cash by going public.

For his part, FSB spokesman Zdanovich accused Media-Most of using strong-arm tactics, saying they employ former KGB officers to spy and bug government officials, businesspeople and even their own correspondents. Media-Most executives, in turn, said that among the equipment seized by the police were devices designed to prevent their phone lines from being bugged.

Igor Y. Malashenko, Media-Most’s deputy chairman, expressed hope that Putin had not made the decision to conduct the raid and urged the president to express his view of the incident.

Several NTV programs are believed to have earned the Kremlin’s particular ire. In one, broadcast just before the March 26 presidential election, residents of an apartment house in the city of Ryazan accused the security services of complicity in an attempted bombing of their building. Local police found chemical sacks in the basement that initially tested positive for explosives, but the FSB announced the next day that it had been a civil defense drill.

Another program, a saucy political satire called “Puppets,” recently depicted the parliament as a brothel and Putin as a client. In another sketch, two wily tailors resembling Putin’s chief of staff, Alexander S. Voloshin, and tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky tried to weave an invisible suit of clothes for the new emperor.

In addition to NTV, Media-Most owns a number of outlets known for independent reporting and challenging the Kremlin, including the Sevodnya newspaper, Itogi magazine and the Echo of Moscow radio station.

Since he became Russia’s acting president Dec. 31, Putin has displayed little affection for the news media, especially those who don’t hew to the Kremlin line. Early this year, Putin accused U.S.-funded Radio Liberty reporter Andrei Babitsky of being a traitor for reporting on the rebel side of the war in Chechnya. In the past month, two newspapers, Kommersant Daily and Novaya Gazeta, received formal warnings after publishing interviews with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov.