MOSCOW: The chief editor of Kommersant, a leading business daily noted for its critical reporting on the Kremlin, quit on Friday, one month after a deal was announced to sell it to a Russian steel magnate with ties to the state gas monopoly Gazprom.
Kommersant's new owner, Alisher Usmanov, accepted the resignation of Vladislav Borodulin, said Pavel Filinkov, commercial director of the Kommersant Publishing House.
"They had a conversation in the process of which the decision was taken to appoint a different editor," Filinkov told The Associated Press. "His decision to resign wasn't forced, but evidently they expressed different views on how the publishing house should be developed."
Later Friday, Kommersant's longtime former chief editor, Andrei Vasilyev, was given back his job after a meeting with Usmanov, Russian news reports said, citing Demyan Kudryavtsev, director general of the Kommersant Publishing House.
Vasilyev led Kommersant under former shareholder Boris Berezovsky — the one-time Kremlin insider who fell out with President Vladimir Putin and lives in self-imposed exile in Britain.
Berezovsky sold his stake to partner Badri Patarkatsishvili earlier in the year. Under a deal announced a month ago, Patarkatsishvili sold it to Usmanov, the owner of the Urals Steel company and iron mines, as well as president of Gazprominvestholding, a 100 percent subsidiary of state gas monopoly OAO Gazprom.
The newspaper, with a daily print run of about 115,000 copies, is widely respected for its comprehensive reporting on Russian business and finance as well as general news coverage often critical of the Kremlin. Kommersant's editorial line has contrasted with most other large Russian papers that have pulled back from criticism amid the cooling media environment under Putin.
Gazprom played a central role in reining in the fiercely Kremlin-critical NTV television station from its exiled owner, media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky. It also last year bought a controlling stake in the Izvestia daily, where content has since become more entertainment-oriented.
