It seems that the Kremlin is now finally going after the last independent radio station in Moscow -- all of Russia?
Here's the story -- not confirmed.
***
Yekaterina Pavlova, Protégé of President’s Press Service, Becomes General Director of Ekho Moskvy
Today, at a meeting of shareholders of Ekho Moskvy, controlled by Gazprom-media (the main shareholder is Yury Kovalchuk) , Yury Fedutinov, the general director who had worked in this position for 22 years, was removed. Yekaterina Pavlova became the new general director.
Yekaterina Pavlova completed the Institute of International Trade and Law (a non-governmental educational institution included in the Ministry of Education’s list of “ineffective colleges”), with a degree in “organizational management.” From 2000-2010, she worked at the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company as a producer and editor-in-chief of the Vesti news program. Then from 2010-2013, she headed the editorial board of the centralized programs of Voice of Russia and simultaneously served as the deputy chair of the company.
Yekaterina Pavlova is the wife and protégé of Aleksey Pavlov, deputy head of the President’s Department of Press Service and Information.
The Insider spoke with a staffer of Voice of Russia who helped to form an impression of Ekho Moskvy’s new general director:
“Everyone knew that her husband is Peskov’s second deputy, and she is his protégé. She became the second person in the company after Andrei Bystritsky, editor-in-chief. She yells impressively, and especially curses well, and in fact she allows herself to do this with superiors and far more experienced people (she herself is about 35 years old). She is a bleached blonde in a jeep. A babe with balls. She calculates in her head well. She can be so nice at first, sweet-talking and pouring coffee and speaking softly. But that’s only as long as she likes you. People haven’t gone into her office without some Novo-Passit. She works for foreign broadcasting, although she knows foreign languages very poorly, and that was some protection from censorship. Her main idol is Margarita Simonyan.”
As Yury Fedutinov, the former general director of Ekho Moskvy stated, his dismissal was related to the reorganization of the radio assets of the Gazprom-Media holding company which owns the radio station.
What direction the situation will take will be clear in early March. On 3 March, elections for the editor-in-chief will take place, where the collective [staff] will once again nominate Aleksey Venediktov, but on 17 March there will be a meeting of the board of directors, which may not confirm this candidacy. Under the radio station’s charter, the general director may only be elected by the collective, but the shareholders (and 66% of the shares, we will recall, belong to Yury Kovalchuk’s Gazprom-media) and they may try to change the charter.
The Insider is watching events as they develop and expresses support to colleagues working at the radio station Ekho Moskvy.
***
UPDATE: At least Venediktov still seems to be reporting, including from Ukraine, and there is lots of critical material on the site. Let's see what happens in March, and whether he is re-elected. I'm worried.
Yuliya Latynina has more of this story, saying Lesin is behind the move, and that it was actually Ekho's involvement in the infamous survey about the Leningrad Blockade, which it did in conjunction with TV Dozhd, that got TV Dozhd in trouble. Then the transcript was shown to Putin.
Indeed, this is not so much a conflict between Putin and Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov as it is between Venediktov and Mikhail Lesin, a former press minister who was appointed to head Gazprom-Media, Ekho Moskvy's parent company, last October. Behind Lesin stands Alexei Gromov, the first deputy head of the presidential administration who raised Lesin from political oblivion and enabled his ascent to the peak of the media Olympus.
I remember Gromov from his days in MID -- and if I'm not mistaken, he was in the Burlatsky Commission (the pseudo human rights commission of the Soviet era) or was its curator.
Comments