Russian Officials Summon Director of Independent TV

Prosecutors in Russia have summoned the outspoken director of the country’s largest private television station for questioning, the company said Sunday.

The reason for the summons was unclear. Yevgeny Kiselyov, general director of NTV, the flagship of the troubled Media-Most media empire, was to appear before a senior special prosecutor today, NTV officials said.

Kiselyov was recently sued by Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov for NTV reports implying that Ustinov’s government apartment was linked with a criminal investigation involving the Kremlin’s property department.

Prosecutors charged Kiselyov’s boss, Media-Most head Vladimir A. Gusinsky, last week with fraud in a privatization deal. Gusinsky has been out of the country and has repeatedly refused prosecutors’ summonses.

The announcement came shortly after Sunday’s showing of NTV’s influential news program, “Itogi,” in which host Kiselyov accused President Vladimir V. Putin of returning to Soviet management practices.

The criticism was characteristic of recent coverage in Media-Most’s outlets. The company has been struggling to settle debts to state-run gas monopoly Gazprom. The media group accuses the Kremlin of using the debt dispute and the investigation of Gusinsky to crank up pressure on NTV, the only one of Russia’s three major networks that is not government-controlled.

Putin has insisted that he supports media freedom and has nothing to do with the Media-Most debt negotiations or the investigations.

The Kiselyov summons came just two days after Gazprom announced a deal that made it NTV’s largest shareholder. NTV is Russia’s only independent television channel with nationwide reach--and by far the most influential source of news outside the Kremlin’s control. Gazprom does not have enough voting shares by itself to control staffing at NTV, and Kiselyov said on his program that this would mean the station would retain editorial independence.

The Gazprom announcement marked the end of a months-long feud for control of NTV that raised accusations of a clampdown on a free press under Putin.

Gusinsky was forced to sell shares to Gazprom to pay off debts that the gas monopoly had guaranteed. The state is the largest shareholder in Gazprom and effectively controls it.

Gusinsky had fought to keep his grip on Media-Most, saying the Kremlin was threatening him with prosecution as a way of stifling criticism, and using the debt to Gazprom as a lever to win control of his media holdings. He was briefly jailed in June.

Gazprom said it wanted only to get its debts paid.