Media stunned by raid

Media-MOST's raiders were media-shy

Russia's NTV channel carried extensive reports on the raid on the offices of the Media-MOST group.

"Astonishing events are taking place in the Russian capital today," it said.

The raid came only four days after the inauguration of the new Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

"The Western press has started describing Russia as a country in which the principles of democracy are of paramount importance," the TV commented.

The guns came out

It showed extensive pictures of the aftermath of the raid at the Media-MOST offices in Palashevskaya Street, in central Moscow.

"The press has once more aroused the interest of the country's major power structures, and that interest is for some reason once more being satisfied at gunpoint," the TV said.

Who were the raiders?

NTV went on to cast doubt on the precise identities of those who carried out the raid and to ask questions about the real intentions behind the move.

What is happening in Moscow is hardly likely to improve the democratic image of the new Russian president

NTV announcer

"We must also note that the actions of these armed people give rise to certain questions. They say that they are from the Tax Police, but the insignia on their camouflage is attached with velcro.

"These people ripped their insignia off, leaving it unclear who is trying to bring order to Media-MOST in this way."

"All this increases the impression that these actions by certain structures are an attempt which will backfire in Putin's favour," the TV said.

"Today in Strasbourg the crucial issue of whether Russia is to remain a member of the Council of Europe is being decided. What is happening in Moscow is hardly likely to improve the democratic image of the new Russian president or the Russian state as a whole."

Putin urged to intervene

Mikhail Berger, the editor of Sevodnya told NTV that the company had foreseen the possibility of such a move.

Instead of an answer... we got gunmen

Sevodnya editor Mikhail Berger

"On 27 April I wrote to Vladimir Putin asking him to intervene, since my experience of meetings with him gave me reason to hope that he definitely supported freedom of speech and would not allow this kind of pressure," he told the TV.

"Unfortunately, instead of an answer to this appeal, which by the way we made known to his press-secretary Mr Gromov, we got gunmen."

Mr Berger said his paper would continue to probe the activities of the leaders of the Federal Security Service.

"It looks as if this is how we can assess the real attitude of the country's leadership to relations with the independent press," he said.

Media freedom under fire

NTV Director-General Yevgeniy Kiselev told a Moscow radio station that the real target was the independence of the media.

"In our country children would know that Media-MOST is a media group incorporating NTV, the Sevodnya newspaper and the Itogi magazine.

"These are all media which take an independent view of things and criticise authorities, including the special services, for various mistakes, which they have made, and which, judging by today's events, they are continuing to make and will still make," he said.

Questions for the new president

"What I am interested in is whether the president knows about what is going on today. This is his second working day after the inauguration.

"It starts with dozens of masked armed men swarming through the building of the headquarters of a major Russian private and independent company in the very heart of Moscow, in Palashevskaya Street, just a stone's throw from Pushkin Square."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.