Vladimir Putin meets the top editors of major Russian news outlets. Most of them are now either directly controlled by the state or owned by one of its loyal oligarchs // kremlin.ru under CC2.0 On May 20, 2019, the management of Kommersant, one of post-Soviet Russia’s oldest and most respected business newspapers, forced its two star reporters, Ivan Safronov and Maxim Ivanov, to resign. The incident was triggered by an April 2019 article that Safronov and Ivanov co-wrote, along with three other staff reporters, about the possible resignation of Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia's upper chamber of parliament, the Council of the Federation. Citing anonymous sources, the article alleged that Matviyenko, a veteran politician who was the governor of St. Petersburg before taking the job in the parliament, was considering another top government position. This was nothing out of the ordinary: well-respected publications in Russia often publish articles based on nothing but anonymous sources, as the country’s notoriously secretive ruling circles are reluctant to go on record about even the most trivial matters of bureaucratic musical chairs. Sometimes these anonymous scoops do play out, but this particular one did not. One month has gone by since the story ran and Matviyenko has still not resigned. Perhaps the article spooked her plans, or perhaps it was simply wrong. What came next was shocking to many, though not unprecedented: both reporters were forced to resign. Maxim Ivanov announced the news on his Facebook page: С завтрашнего дня я больше не работаю в ИД «Коммерсантъ». Если без лирики: уход из Ъ оформлен по соглашению сторон, а решение о необходимости прекратить трудовые отношения принято акционером ИД. Поводом стала заметка «Спикеров делать из этих людей», в которой сказано о возможном уходе Валентины Матвиенко с поста председателя Совета федерации. As of today, I’m no longer employed at the Kommersant publishing house. To avoid waxing lyrical: formally, my resignation from Kommersant is a mutual agreement between parties, but the decision to terminate my employment was made by the publishing house’s stakeholder. The reason is an article […] about the alleged resignation of Valentina Matviyenko from the position of the speaker of the Council of the Federation. Kommersant has only one true “stakeholder” in Alisher Usmanov, one of the wealthiest people in the world, and the owner of a vast media empire which includes Kommersant, Megafon, one of the top four mobile providers in the country, and the Mail.Ru Group which owns stakes in two of the most popular social networks in the Russian-speaking world, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. Kommersant is a tiny speck among Usmanov’s other assets but its political coverage seems to have caused him significant problems. In March this year, another Kommersant reporter, Maria Karpenko, was forced to resign over the Telegram channel she administered. Several former and current employees told Runet Echo that Usmanov’s interference in the newspaper’s editorial affairs has been constant over the years, whenever he felt the coverage threatened his business interests or angered his patrons in the Kremlin. In 2011, Maxim Kovalsky, the editor of Kommersant’s political magazine Vlast (Power) was fired for the magazine’s issue covering the mass fraud during the parliamentary elections. Печально, что к таким чисткам в СМИ начинаешь привыкать. Газета.ру, Лента, Деловой Петербург, теперь Коммерсант. Это список можно продолжать. Крупных независимых СМИ все меньше. — Andrey Pivovarov (@brewerov) 20 мая 2019 г. It’s sad that we’re getting used to these purges in the media. Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru, Delovoy Peterburg, now Kommersant. The list could go on. There are fewer and fewer large independent media outlets. In an interview with Vedomosti, a competing business newspaper, Kommersant editor-in-chief Vladimir Zhelonkin said that Ivanov and Safronov had to resign because their article did not comply with editorial standards. He did not specify which standards exactly and skirted around the fact that he, as the top editor, had run the story on the newspaper's front page story when it came out. He also denied the allegations of Usmanov's involvement. Just hours after Ivanov and Safronov were made to leave, the entire politics desk of Kommersant, several dozen people in total, resigned in protest and in solidarity with their colleagues. One of the reporters, Vsevolod Inyutin, posted on his Facebook page a stack of signed notices saying: “I hereby resign from my position due to my disagreement with the stakeholder’s decision to dismiss two employees of the politics desk, Ivan Safronov and Maxim Ivanov.” Screen capture of Vsevolod Inutin Facebook post. К этому давно шло.