Viktor Shenderovich

Viktor Shenderovich, Russia's sharpest political wit, should be the most tragic of clowns. Once, his audience ran into the millions. Now he's been silenced, deprived of his television stage. But Shenderovich, too scathing and risky for Moscow's TV bosses, insists he isn't downhearted that he can't appear on television. "The fact I have dropped off the television screen is not really a personal drama," he said. "For me, it's an alarming sign of the times." Shenderovich is under an unofficial ban.

Viktor Shenderovich, Russia's sharpest political wit, should be the most tragic of clowns. Once, his audience ran into the millions. Now he's been silenced, deprived of his television stage. But Shenderovich, too scathing and risky for Moscow's TV bosses, insists he isn't downhearted that he can't appear on television. "The fact I have dropped off the television screen is not really a personal drama," he said. "For me, it's an alarming sign of the times." Shenderovich is under an unofficial ban.

MOSCOW - An opposition activist being held by Russian authorities says he was kidnapped from Ukraine, tortured and forced to sign a confession, a human rights group said Wednesday. Leonid Razvozzhayev told five members of the Public Observer Commission on Tuesday night that he was abducted Friday in Kiev, smuggled back to Russia and subjected to ill treatment and psychological torment that compelled him to sign and read on videotape a 10-page confession of plotting to organize mass disturbances.

In a sometimes stormy confrontation in the Kremlin on Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin heard out a group of journalists who fear that the state wants to take over the country's sole private television network and limit editorial freedoms. For more than three hours, Putin tried to convince employees of NTV network that he respects their independence, and that he wishes the network to remain outside of state hands.

After seizing Russia's only independent national television network, energy giant Gazprom has moved swiftly to dismantle two related publications that were critical of the Kremlin. Amid grim days for media freedom in Russia, journalists from the liberal Itogi weekly newsmagazine were locked out and fired Tuesday, a day after the partially state-owned Gazprom joined forces with the head of the Sem Dney publishing house to shut down a leading newspaper, Sevodnya.

They're so crude and uncultured that few envy their fabulous wealth. They're such tacky dressers that noses wrinkle in unison whenever they penetrate the posh gathering places of the beautiful people. And they're so stupid, greedy and gullible, it is obvious at first glance that the strutting Philistines dubbed "New Russians" could be successful only through thuggery or dumb luck.