Putin Backs Foreign Investor at NTV

President Vladimir Putin met Monday with a group of NTV journalists, who said he told them in the course of a candid and often confrontational conversation that he welcomes CNN founder Ted Turner's proposal to invest in Russian media and would like to see NTV remain as a non-government channel free to criticize the Kremlin.

"He reiterated that he would like NTV to remain a non-government company, but added immediately that Gazprom is not the state," NTV general director Yevgeny Kiselyov said after the three-hour meeting with Putin in the Kremlin.

Putin also gave journalists a copy of the letter he sent to Turner on Jan. 23, in which he thanked the American for his interest and said he would wholeheartedly welcome his investment, Kiselyov said. The letter did not mention NTV or give any political guarantees. Turner had sought assurances that if he bought a stake in NTV, the Kremlin would not interfere in the station's operation or coverage.

Putin said in the letter that he shared Turner's "convictions that media must be honest and balanced in helping to create a civil society."

"I view with optimism the prospects for the investment of foreign capital in Russian companies," Putin wrote. "I look forward to productive cooperation in the future."

U.S. financier and philanthropist George Soros said Monday that he would team up with Turner and other Western investors to buy a 25 percent stake in NTV to protect its independence.

Alexei Venediktov of Ekho Moskvy radio, which also is part of Vladimir Gusinsky's media empire, said Monday that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development also was ready to invest in Media-MOST.

Soros said that foreign investment is the only way to keep the television company from falling under the control of state-run gas giant Gazprom, a creditor and shareholder of NTV and its parent company, Media-MOST.

Click here to read our Special Report on the Struggle for Media-MOST.

"My participation is really more of a symbolic participation. I really back his [Turner's] effort to take over and control NTV because it is terribly important to preserve independent media," Soros, who has commercial interests and a large philanthropic network in Russia, told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

But Soros added that he and Turner would not push ahead with the deal if Gazprom threatens the television company's independence.

Gazprom's media arm, Gazprom-Media, announced last week that it is close to controlling NTV.

The television station also has been under persistent pressure from the Prosecutor General's Office, which is pursuing a fraud investigation against Vladimir Gusinsky. After months of searches and interrogations, prosecutors began Friday to question journalists.

Throughout the conflict, Media-MOST has accused prosecutors of carrying out a political vendetta. The government says the investigation is based on economic considerations.

At the meeting, journalists complained of the pressure from prosecutors. Putin conceded that some of the prosecutors' actions were "excessive" but rejected claims that the case against Gusinsky was political. He reiterated his position that he has little influence over the prosecutor's office.

"We found out today that the prosecutor's office is an absolutely independent organization ?€” Putin said it several times," said Viktor Shenderovich, the satirist behind the "Kukly" show. "He is ready to help us and considers some of the prosecutors' actions excessive."

"You will not believe me, but there is nothing I can do," Shenderovich quoted Putin as saying. "Do you want me to return to the right of the telephone call?" Putin was referring to the Soviet-era practice of law enforcement officials making their decisions based on telephone calls from Communist Party officials.

Putin first met for 30 minutes with "Glas Naroda" talk show host Svetlana Sorokina, who had appealed to him for the meeting Friday in NTV footage of a journalists' protest. They were protesting the questioning of anchor Tatyana Mitkova over a loan she received to buy a Moscow apartment. The president then joined 10 other NTV journalists in the Kremlin library.

Sorokina said that Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov was leaving the president's office as she was coming in.

Apparently in response to his meeting with Putin, Ustinov said he regretted making public the loans that NTV employees had received from a Gusinsky-connected bank.

"Investigators have no questions about journalistic activities," he said Monday evening on ORT television. "Our goal is to establish the legality and grounds of providing the loans."

Kiselyov said that the talks were tense and NTV journalists often interrupted the president.

Putin was well aware of NTV's financial problems and had up-to-date briefing papers on the course of the Gusinsky case, reporters said. He attempted to drive a wedge between Gusinsky, whom he sees as a thief, and reporters. But NTV journalists reiterated their support of Gusinsky. They said many key reporters will leave the channel if it falls under government control.

"There was an attempt to say: Guys, journalists are one thing and Gusinsky the other. Give up Gusinsky!" news anchor Marianna Maximovskaya said. "We attempted to explain that Gusinsky for us is not a cashier, he is the founder of NTV."

At what reporters unanimously called the "most striking moment" of the conversation, Putin said that the channel's editorial stance was not so much a result of pressure from the prosecutors, but of hours-long telephone discussions with Gusinsky.

"When he said that our position was a result of Gusinsky's instructions, I was simply offended," Shenderovich said. "He does not admit the thought that I say something because I think it is so."

Kiselyov said he confirmed to Putin that he spent hours on the telephone with Gusinsky because he is his "friend, partner, because we have common views."

As journalists shared their impressions in an Ekho Moskvy studio, Gusinsky, who is under house arrest in Spain, listened on a telephone line.

Kiselyov said the Kremlin talks were tense and journalists often interrupted the president. "Yes, there was a high barrier of mutual misunderstanding and mistrust," he said. But Kiselyov said he hoped journalists were able to convey their message that the channel will not be the same if there is a hostile takeover and they intended to strike.

"If someone has been telling him [Putin] that it would be possible to carry out a political murder of NTV quietly, he now understands that it won't work. We are not the Czech Republic and people will not gather in crowds [to protest] but journalists will behave in the same way."

In Prague, state television reporters protested for weeks against the appointment of a new head of the television company and were supported by tens of thousands of demonstrators.

Kiselyov said the meeting was an important "first step" in a dialogue with the Kremlin after months of mutual estrangement, when reporters were antagonized by the prosecutors' actions.

Against the background of reports that Kremlin officials had been angry over some of NTV's satirical shows, Putin told the journalists that Shenderovich's "Kukly and "Itogo" programs are among his favorite. When Sorokina complained that government officials refuse to appear on her "Glas Naroda" show fearing for their careers, Putin said he has no objections against officials taking part in NTV programs.

Putin's spokesman Alexei Gromov quoted the president as saying that NTV has one of the most professional teams of journalists, which has to be preserved "no matter who owns the controlling share or who will make up the channel's board of directors." Its criticism of authorities is "not only normal, but useful," Interfax reported.