Russia's state-dominated gas giant, Gazprom, has taken control of a leading magazine, Itogi, and shut down a newspaper, Segodnya, following its take-over of the Moscow TV channel, NTV, at the weekend.
Meanwhile, in what promises to be a long media war, defecting NTV journalists, who say the Kremlin is behind the Gazprom moves, last night began broadcasting on a new channel.
Gazprom took the action as controller of the parent company of all three organisations, Media Most.
Segodnya's closure was the most dramatic. Gazprom simply ordered the presses to shut down as it began printing Monday night's edition and told staff the paper was now shut.
It told Itogi staff they could keep working, but most are expected to quit following the resignation of the paper's editor, Sergei Parkhomenko.
The gas giant insists its moves are purely commercial, but the journalists say the move is being pushed by the government, which has a large stake in Gazprom, as a way of silencing Russia's independent media.
Itogi, like Segodnya and NTV, has a reputation for airing reports critical of the government. The magazine, which has a co-operation agreement with Newsweek, has featured stories of human rights abuses by Russian troops in Chechnya, the chaos surrounding the sinking of the Kursk submarine last summer and corruption in the corridors of power in Moscow.
Journalists from all three organisations met yesterday to discuss strategy, with magazine staff hoping to transplant their operation to a new paper.
"They are trying to form a new Itogi magazine," said Marianna Maximovskaya, a newsreader and leading NTV defector.
She began work last night in what staff hope will be a "transplanted" form of NTV, putting out news broadcasts via a network made up of a subsidiary channel, TNT, and another TV company, TV6.
Tax police have now started an inquiry into TNT, saying they are investigating the station's chief accountant for non-payment of £4,000 in back taxes.
In a statement Media Most attacked the action as part of a campaign to hound the journalists. "In exerting this latest pressure on the TNT leadership, the authorities seek to muzzle the former NTV news team once and for all," it said.
"The Kremlin achieved its goal of acquiring an unchallenged monopoly in the information field," said a Moscow Times columnist, Yevgenia Albats. "As of that moment, all three major national television channels came under complete state control."
The US media tycoon, Mr Ted Turner, founder of CNN, is in discussions to buy a stake in NTV, but he may decide against it now that most of its news team has quit.
But ordinary Russians have yet to take much interest in the affair. Demonstrations in support of NTV attracted no more than 15,000 people in Moscow, a city of 12 million, and much smaller numbers elsewhere in the country.