End of the World News

Vladimir putin wasn't able to rub out the Chechen guerrillas, Viktor Shenderovich remarked ruefully last Saturday, but he sure got us. Shenderovich, whose impishly satirical programs are wildly popular in Moscow, had just resigned from NTV, Russia's only privately owned nationwide network. A few hours earlier NTV as the Russian public knew it — opinionated, strident but often head and shoulders above the competition — had ceased to exist. In the early hours of the morning police and security guards hired by the network's new owners had taken over its studios and installed a new management headed by Boris Jordan, a...

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