Thousands of supporters of the Russian independent television channel NTV gathered in St Petersburg yesterday in support of what the station's journalists say is a defence of free media against the power of the Kremlin.
Local police said some 4,000 people thronged Troitskaya Square, opposite the Winter Palace, waving placards and Russian flags, a day after a Moscow rally to support NTV's stand against last week's boardroom coup by the state-dominated gas company, Gazprom.
On April 3rd, Gazprom replaced the board at NTV, Russia's only independent nationwide television network and the most influential source of information outside Kremlin control. It ousted its founder, Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, and replaced managing director Mr Yevgeny Kiselyov with an American banker.
The following day, US media magnate Mr Ted Turner, founder of the CNN global news operation, announced that he had reached an agreement to buy a stake in the network from Mr Gusinsky - who is in Spain fighting extradition to Russia on fraud charges - saying he hoped to ensure the station's continued independence. In St Petersburg, people held posters declaring "No TV without NTV!" and "We won't give NTV to Putin!", denouncing what the station's reporters say is the President's leading role in a crackdown on independent media.
Close to the cruiser Aurora, whose salvo marked the start of the Bolsheviks' October 1917 revolution, liberal politicians mounted a modified truck to address the crowd.
"What they are doing to NTV is [the start of] the road to repression," said parliamentary deputy Mr Sergei Popov. "But we will not go down that road," he told the cheering crowd.
The protest came a day after more than 10,000 people gathered outside NTV's Moscow studio to support its journalists' decision not to accept the new management installed by Gazprom.
Meanwhile, the former Kremlin aide, Mr Pavel Borodin, arrived under police escort in Geneva on Saturday from a New York jail after he agreed not to fight extradition proceedings over money-laundering charges. He also faces charges of belonging to a criminal organisation.
Mr Borodin, who brought President Putin to the Kremlin from the relative obscurity of St Petersburg, had been held in a US prison since January when he was stopped on his arrival for the inauguration ceremony of President Bush.
He has been under investigation for allegedly having taken at least $25 million in kickbacks for awarding lucrative construction contracts, mostly related to renovation work at the Kremlin. The scandal is linked to two Swiss construction firms that won the contracts, Mabetex and Mercata Trading. Mr Borodin denies the charges.
A leading Russian prosecutor also argued on Saturday that Mr Borodin had committed no crime. During their inquiry into his activities, "Russian investigators did not reveal any violations or criminal revenues in the reconstruction of the Kremlin or other work," deputy chief of the Russian prosecutor general's special investigations department Mr Ruslan Tamayev said.