EURASIA INTELLIGENCE DIGEST

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06557562
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: August 31, 2018
• Case Number: F-2016-01256
• Publication Date: February 10, 2003

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE
10 February 2003
EID1OFEB03
Eurasia Intelligence Dige0
� The staff at Russia's embattled NTV network is vigorously resisting the
management changes imposed by parent company Gazprom-Media since
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The EID is prepared by analysts in the Office of Russian and European Analysis and features a first look at developing
events. It is not coordinated outside of OREA. Comments
are welcome
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5. Staff of Russia's NTV Strikes Back at New Management. The staff at the embattled NTV
television network has taken several public steps to protest the management changes imposed
by NTV's owner, Gazprom-Media, since the January dismissal of general director Boris
Jordan, but NTV's staff has few legal levers and appears to be hoping to embarrass its
parent company into meeting at least some of the staffs demands.
� Just a week after the 22 January appointment of Nikolay Senkevich as NTV's new general
director, the network's governing board passed a vote of no confidence in his leadership.
Various media outlets have ridiculed the appointment of Senkevich, a physician by training
who has little television management experience, and of his deputy, Aleksey Zemskiy, who has
produced entertainment programming rather than news.
� The following week, the board sent a well-publicized letter to Gazprom chief Aleksey Miller
asking for a meeting to settle the "crisis" at NTV.
� Both Gazprom-Media chief Dybal and Gazprom CEO Miller have met with prominent NTV
journalists, but last week NTV sources were still telling the press that, unless a compromise
were reached, most of the NTV staff would resign. Leonid Parfenov, the well-known host of
NTV's talk show "Namedni," announced last Thursday that he is taking his program off the air
for at least three months.
The scandal is the continuation of a long-running battle for control of NTV, Russia's most
professional and independent nationwide network, seen by competing Kremlin factions as an
instrument for manipulating voters' preferences in upcoming elections and as a means for
self-enrichment. The appointment of Senkevich seemed to be a victory for the Kremlin's
security services - allied faction (the " silovild"). The speed of the appointment allowed the
rival Yeltsin "Family" group little time to promote a candidate, and Senkevich 's last job was
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Eurasia Intelligence Digest
under Dybal at Gazprom-Media, which has been tied to the security services. Last fall, a bank
reportedly linked to the security services bought a 49-percent share in Gazprom-Media in a deal
allegedly facilitated by banker and siloviki ally Sergey Pugachev.
� As punishment for Jordan's role in brokering that deal, Press Minister Lesin and presidential
chief of staff Voloshin--representing the Yeltsin Family--pushed for Jordan's dismissal,
Not surprisingly, the Yeltsin Family is now seen as benefiting
from the embarrassing public spat at NTV.
� Lesin, who has his eye on NTV's advertising business for his "Video International" firm,
released a statement last Thursday obliquely criticizing Dybal's and Miller's handling of the
crisis at the network.
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