The struggle for control of Russia's media burst into full-scale war a couple of months ago after smouldering for some time. It is now approaching a conclusion which could give President Putin and his allies control over all the media that count.
By pure chance I happened to find myself in the thick of the battle one May morning on my way to the market. My short journey took me past the headquarters of Media-Most - the only big media group to have opposed Mr Putin.
Armed and masked men poured out of cars and vans and stormed the Media Most headquarters on Palashevsky Lane, a couple of hundred yards from where I stay in Moscow.
The armed men were from the tax police, the interior ministry and the KGB's successor agency. They were, it was later announced, looking for compromising documents.
Since that sunny May morning Media Most's owner, Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, has been put through the mill. Accused of fraud and shady practices, something not entirely unknown in Russia's business world, he was even put into Moscow's primitive Butyrka prison for a week without being charged.
Then the tide of battle turned. It was announced that all charges against him had been dropped. He headed away immediately in his private jet to join his family at their Spanish mansion. Rumours of a deal between him and the government abound.
Now Media-Most is in talks with Gazprom, the giant natural gas company which supplies energy not only to the former eastern-bloc states but to large tracts of western Europe. Gazprom, linked to the former prime minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, is owed a lot of money by MediaMost and is calling in its debts.
Gazprom argues the debts are such that it can take all MediaMost's shares and gain control of the independent NTV channel, the Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy, the daily newspaper Segodnya and the weekly Itogi news magazine, which is published in conjunction with Newsweek.
Media-Most has called in foreign valuers in a bid to show that it is worth a lot more money than its creditor estimates, and that Gazprom is entitled to take up only a small percentage of shares. The wrangle continues but the future of the company, which has provided the only opposition to the administration, is in doubt.
So too is the media empire of Mr Gusinsky's great rival, Mr Boris Berezovsky, who supported Mr Putin in the election but is now making anti-government noises. Mr Berezovsky owns 49 per cent of ORT, the country's biggest TV channel.
Even though the state owns the other 51 per cent, Mr Berezovsky has been known to set the station's news agenda. Now the state has moved to buy back Mr Berezovsky's shareholding and gain 100 per cent control. It already totally owns the second most popular RTR channel.
It now seems possible that all three TV channels will soon be owned either by the state or by supporters of the president, and in Russia TV is all-important in opinion-forming and in influencing voters.
Anti-Putin newspapers such as the muck-racking Novaya Gazeta will remain but their circulation is so low they really do not count.
In a characteristic move Mr Berezovsky went on Mr Gusin sky's TV channel last night to say that he now had doubts about selling his ORT channel to the state. "It would be a bad thing for the state to have such control of the media," he said.