Russia muzzles its best independent news corporation

ON FRIDAY May 13th, Vladimir Putin celebrated the 25th birthday of the Russian television conglomerate VGTRK, the nerve center of the Kremlin’s state media machine. “Monopolies are always harmful, and in the information sphere especially so,” he told the executives gathered in Sochi. The (unintended) irony was only underscored by a piece of news from back in Moscow that day: the top editors at RBC, a media group whose hard-hitting investigations touched Mr Putin’s family, had been forced out. The final straw seemed to be a story examining the construction of an oyster farm near an opulent Black Sea property known widely as “Putin’s Palace”.

RBC’s fate came as no surprise. Over the past two years, under the ambitious leadership of Elizaveta Osetinskaya, the once-floundering conglomerate established itself as both influential and independent—a fatal combination in today’s Russia. RBC’s news site became the most cited in the country, its news wire a trusted source for business, and its TV station a rare bastion of objectivity. Meanwhile, RBC’s investigative journalists dug into taboo topics others did not dare touch: Russian soldiers fighting in eastern Ukraine; the finances of the Russian Orthodox Church; and the business arrangements of a woman alleged to be Mr Putin’s daughter and her husband.