KISELEV: NTV is currently the only independent TV station in Russia that broadcasts throughout the country…NTV is the only TV company of the three national TV companies that [criticizes] Putin. I would like to emphasize that it’s not our goal to criticize the president, but we are the only ones who are not charmed by the president–and this has become an illness in Russian journalism…It’s considered almost bad taste to speak about his obvious mistakes, his faults, about worrisome tendencies in his domestic and foreign policy, the fact that blood continues to be shed in Chechnya, that not all citizens of Russia welcome the alarming tendencies in our foreign policy, the worsening of the relations with the United States and other Western countries.
Kokh is lying. This is a political task assigned by the Kremlin…They use the expression the “NTV project”–it’s an operation to seize NTV from its previous owners and establish state control. Essentially, it’s a matter of nationalization through Gazprom.
I can only guess, but the pressure is exercised by other, higher courts, by higher-ranking judges. Unfortunately, in Russia the legal system is such that ordinary judges are dependent on the chairmen of courts. They are dependent on them economically: their pay, their living conditions…Besides, people are afraid. They are afraid of the FSB [the domestic successor to the KGB], afraid for their children, afraid for their relatives.
You know, I have no doubt that the President is informed of what’s happening. Two months ago, even more, two and a half months ago…I and a group of leading NTV journalists were invited to the Kremlin to meet with the President…And the President demonstrated that he knew the situation around NTV very well. (He knew it so well) that he quoted facts, figures and the arguments of our opponents.
What happens next? What else can you do to stave off losing control? I am not so pessimistic…We have never had such strong public support. The situation with NTV [has] stirred the society. We have become a big problem that has to be tackled publicly, not in corridors by hidden machinations in [the] courts. I think we have too many questions about the legality of the other side’s actions, and the society has too many questions. To eliminate these questions the Supreme Court has to interfere. We are not speaking about an economic dispute when a hardware store is transferred from one owner to another…A change of one of these [three national] channels to a point beyond recognition is a problem that affects the interests of tens of millions of citizens.
