The Russian authorities have closed the country's only nationwide television station outside the Kremlin's control on foot of a court order.
The TV6 station, which fought a legal battle to continue broadcasting against a minority shareholder it accused of acting on behalf of the Kremlin, went off the air overnight and was replaced by a sports channel.
"It looks like some kind of a television coup," TV6 general director Mr Yelgeny Kiselyov told Ekho Moskvy radio. "The authorities today showed that their single goal is to gag us".
Mr Kiselyov said power had been cut off to TV6 studios and Internet and telephone lines were not working.
The move, following a visit by court baliffs to the Media Ministry yesterday where they sought to enforce a court ruling to shut the station down, seemed to have come as a surprise for TV6, which had counted on a ten-day grace period reserved for appeals.
The fate of TV6 was sealed when a pension fund holding a minority stake and linked to Russia's biggest oil producer, LUKOIL, won a court case to close the station because of irregularities with its charter capital.
The row, though formally commercial, has re-ignited concern over the Kremlin's tolerance of independent media in Russia. Last year, state-dominated gas monopoly Gazprom took over the country's biggest independent television broadcaster, NTV.
President Mr Vladimir Putin has said the state played no role in TV6's troubles and would not interfere with court decisions.