Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday, Poser said that he would not tolerate further censorship of his program. The most recent instance occurred when management at Channel One decided to nix a part of a February 6 interview that discussed Alexei Navalny – a leading opposition figure and one of the organizers of a massive opposition protest over the weekend.

“It might be that at the end of the day it’s not as a result of [the incident concerning] Navalny, but if anything else like this happens, I might just tell them – that’s enough!” Posner said.

At the same time, the host expressed hope that it wouldn’t come to such an extreme measure.

He also promised that if the show is cancelled, a press conference would be held to explain the specific reasons why.

“I’m very glad that, thanks to the Internet, anyone who’s interested can see: here is the program and here is what they cut out of it. It’s becoming meaningless to cut things out,” Posner said.

The host admitted that February 6 was not the first time he’d agreed to air a censored episode. While it happens “relatively rarely, this is one of the compromises that I sometimes make,” he acknowledged.

The interview in question was with fellow television host Tina Kandelaki, during which Posner asked whether or not she thought that he would be allowed to interview Aleksei Navalny on his own show: “I could call up Aleksei Navalny, but what do you think, would they let me?” According to Gazeta.ru, this fragment was cut out of the episode that aired in most of Russia, with the full version only broadcasted in the Far East, where it is regularly airs live.

Kommersant learned that the magazine has virtually disappeared from newsstands only after receiving reports from its readers. Representatives of the publication then went around to several dozen retailers and were consistently told that copies of Vlast had either been sold or were returned to distributors as unsold, despite the fact that a new copy of the magazine is not due to come out for another several days.

The issue in question, dated July 4, is largely dedicated to the upcoming resignation of largely unpopular St. Petersburg Mayor and United Russia member Valentina Matvienko, who was controversially chosen by President Dmitri Medvedev last month to become Speaker of the Federation Council. The soon-to-be-former mayor is pictured on the cover blowing a small horn with a quote that plays on the Soviet-era award “For Service to the Fatherland” – only here the word “service” is replaced by a term made up by city authorities for the gargantuan icicles that killed a record number of residents this past winter. Matvienko was widely criticized for failing to keep streets clear of snow and ensure that icicles be removed from buildings before they could harm pedestrians. The article itself discusses her successes and failures in office, her strained relationship with the president, and the possibility that her new position may simply be an honorable discharge from Russian politics.

According to Ekho Moskvy, the newspaper is not ruling out the possibility that the issue angered the city administration. On condition of anonymity, a representative of one of two companies that distribute 90 percent of all the copies of Vlast throughout St. Petersburg told Kommersant that the order to cut off distribution came directly from the St. Petersburg City Printing Committee; the company made no official statement. A representative of the second company did make an official statement that no copies had been confiscated from retail outlets.

Printing Committee head Aleksandr Korennikov told Kommersant that he was unaware of any confiscations.

Alexander Kuchma has long been known as the man who slashed Khodorkovsky’s face with a cobbler’s knife, claiming that “I wanted to cut his eye out, but my hand slipped.” At the time, the incident gave rise to speculation that Soviet-era tactics of recruiting mentally unstable prisoners to attack others were being employed against the jailed oligarch.

Indeed, on May 16, 2011, just months after finishing a seven-year sentence for armed robbery, Kuchma told Gazeta.ru that he had been forced to carry out the attack. He did not, however, name names. Shortly afterwards, an unnamed federal television channel paid Kuchma “a certain sum of money” and shot a ten-minute interview where he recounts the story of how he was made to carry out the attack – this time, complete with specific names and dates.

Kuchma was then told by an employee of the channel that the interview would not be aired because it had “caused alarm and was being reviewed by the general director.” A representative of the channel told Gazeta.ru that it may still be aired at a later time.

Fearing for his life, Kuchma again phoned Gazeta.ru and retold his story, complete with the details he’d given in the filmed interview. “After they taped the broadcast, I decided to tell you everything sooner than they could come crashing down on me,” Kuchma told editors. “What do they need me for if I’ve already told everything?”

In the interview with Gazeta.ru, published on Thursday, Kuchma explains how two law enforcement officers organized the 2006 attack on Khodorkovsky. The website stipulates that, in the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, they have changed the names and certain positions published in the article – but are prepared to release them in the case of an investigation. They also note that fact-checking has found that the people named by Kuchma indeed either worked or still work for the Federal Penitentiary System.

The incident began in March 2006, when Khodorkovsky and Kuchma were placed in disciplinary confinement as punishment for drinking tea. Shortly afterwards, two officers met Kuchma in a separate room and began beating him almost immediately. “They started saying I should take revenge on Khodorkovsky for supposedly getting me put in the disciplinary cell. They said that I should take a knife and stab him in the eye, like to stab it out. The plan was such that I needed to attack him in his sleep,” said the former prisoner. “I told them: ‘What are you getting at, guys? He’ll die.’”

“The first time I didn’t agree, they called me back, beat me again,” Kuchma went on. “They said that I already knew everything and if I didn’t agree they’d hang me in the disciplinary cell and say that I hung myself. The second time they convinced me that they’d kill me if I didn’t agree. I pretended to agree.”

Kuchma said the men, whose names he didn’t know, gave him a knife and that while they didn’t say directly to kill Khodorkovsky, “I understood that that’s what they meant. They said that they won’t add onto my sentence for it, that I’d live peacefully. That these were serious people from Moscow, that the government will defend me, very big people, that’s the sort of stuff they said.”

The ex-prisoner explained that he decided not to kill his cell mate, but just to slash him in the nose. “It was clear that there was more and more noise, that the bosses, lawyers, journalists had come running. I had hoped that those guys would leave me alone because of all this clamor,” he explained.

After attacking Khodorkovsky, Kuchma was put back in a disciplinary cell and the same plainclothes officers came back. “They beat me again and said: ‘what, you sleazeball, you didn’t do what we asked?!’ I apologized and said that I missed because I couldn’t see anything at night. They beat me some more.”

According to Gazeta.ru, representatives from the Federal Penitentiary Service refused to comment on Kuchma’s remarks. In addition, the editors have issued an open call for a criminal investigation.

Kuchma’s accusations come at a turbulent time in the Khodorkovsky case. The former oligarch’s extended prison term was upheld by a Moscow appeals court on Tuesday and he is now officially considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. Next week, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is set to rule on Khodorkovsky’s complaint against the Russian government about the legality of his arrest and conditions of his confinement.

Gazeta.ru’s full interview with Kuchma can be read in Russian here.

On Tuesday, a user of the website HabraHabr living in Ulyanovsk complained that he was unable to access the LiveJournal blog of noted whistleblower Aleksei Navalny. When the user asked his internet provider, Telekom.ru, for an explanation, he received a letter in response: “Access to the resource navalny.livejournal.com has been temporarily suspended by order of the FSB.”

Upon further inquiry to Telekom.ru, Gazeta.ru discovered that the company had blocked access not only to Navalny’s blog, but to LiveJournal entirely.

“The company has limited access to LiveJournal by order of the FSB,” a technology support specialist from the company told Gazeta.ru. However, he could not explain on the basis of what sanction the FSB asked the company to block access to the website.

This is not the first time Russian authorities have blocked access to social media websites. In July 2010, an ISP in Komsomolsk-on-Amur received a court order to block access to YouTube; in the same month, a court in Ingushetia ordered providers to block access to all of LiveJournal.

Prominent blogger Aleksei Navalny has been involved in an ongoing row with government authorities in connection with his status as Russia’s chief whistleblower. Most notably, Navalny used his shareholder earnings in the state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft to reveal an alleged $4 billion of embezzlement. Last week, federal investigators filed criminal charges against the blogger for having allegedly defrauded a state-owned timber company. On Wednesday, investigators announced that an “unspecified culture studies institute” had determined that his website’s logo was a desecration of Russia’s coat of arms.

According to the Moscow Times, Telekom.ru is now blaming technical difficulties for the lack of access to LiveJournal, despite previously admitting that the FSB issued an order to block it. The FSB denies issuing a complaint about Navalny’s blog, but it is unclear whether or not they deny complaining about LiveJournal itself.

Viktoria Lomasko and Anton Nikolaev had planned to show their work at the gallery in International University in Moscow. The exhibit, which was to be curated by noted art historian Andrei Yerofeyev, was meant to show graphic representations of controversial topics in Russian society.

But university administrators balked when they saw two pieces that criticized another Moscow university and former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

Nikolaev explained what happened on his blog:

This is the third time already that an exhibit with work by Vika and I has been closed because of censorship.

Twice it was because of our piece “Tagansky Justice,” which spoke the whole truth about how the clergy and Orthodox Christians are fascist assholes. First at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, then at Vinzavod.

In the first instance, we were told that the air conditioners were broken; in the second one, they unexpectedly changed the plan for the exhibit.

The third time they cancelled it because of Luzhkov.

They said directly in the text that it was because of him.

Here’s the story. Yerofeyev asked if Vika would do a personal exhibit in the gallery of International University. Most of the exhibited works were our joint reports on controversial societal topics. At the last moment, International University demanded that we take down two of our reports.

1) About how teachers are being unlawfully fired from the Polygraphic Institute.
2) About unlawful construction in Moscow.

The explanation for the first was that they didn’t want to spoil relations with the administration at Polygraphic (Moscow State University of Printing Arts).

And for the second – that Luzhkov lectures in the university.

Vika and I told them that we refuse to remove the pieces from the exhibit.

A representative from International University told us that, in that case, there won’t be an exhibit.

The offending works can be found here and here.

Nikolaev’s post is dated April 21, but on April 27 he added an update:

According to Andrei Yerofeyev, curator of the banned exhibit, [the artists] would have had to make a compromise with the university administration in order for the exhibit to go on. They were prepared to leave up the drawing about Polygraphic, but they did not agree to leave up the report about how Kadashi was razed that criticizes Luzhkov. Yury Luzhkov holds the post of dean of the Department of City Management.

Luzhkov was given this appointment almost immediately after being fired by President Dmitri Medvedev from his post as mayor. A couple of weeks ago he read a lecture entitled “Socrates was always Socrates,” which television channel REN-TV reported “was reminiscent of the story of Luzhkov’s downfall.” Lomasko used the lecture as the basis for a comic response to the ban of their exhibit (translated by theotherrussia.org from the original):

Yerofeyev himself has at times been a target of censorship. Last June, Moscow’s Tagansky Court fined him and a fellow colleague a total of $11,400 for putting on the exhibit “Forbidden Art – 2006″ at the Andrei Sakharov Museum & Public Center. Their defense filed an appeal but lost in October 2010.

While access to the internet itself remains largely unhindered in Russia, many bloggers have come under attack – both online and in person.

In the last two years there have been several cases of technical blocking and numerous cases of content removal. The authorities have also increasingly engaged in harassment of bloggers. At least 25 cases of blogger harassment, including 11 arrests, were registered between January 2009 and May 2010, compared with seven in 2006–08. In addition, dozens of blogs have reportedly been attacked in recent years by a hacker team called the Hell Brigade.

The report did point out areas where access to the internet remains a pressing issue:

The number of internet users jumped from 1.5 million in 1999 to 46.5 million in 2010, and grew by more than 13 million in the last two years, though this still leaves Russia’s penetration rate at 33 percent, lower than the rates in Central European countries. The level of infrastructure differs significantly from place to place, and gaps are evident between urban and rural areas as well as between different types of cities. The worst access conditions can be found in the North Caucasus and the industrial towns of Siberia and the Far East.

Corruption within the federal government also plays a part in what companies control internet access across the country:

Five access providers—Comstar, Vimpelcom, ER-Telecom, AKADO, and the state-owned SvyazInvest—controlled more than 67 percent of the broadband market as of February 2010. Regional branches of SvyazInvest account for 36 percent of subscribers, up from 27.8 percent in 2008. As at the federal level, regional dominance usually depends on political connections and the tacit approval of regional authorities. Although this situation is not the direct result of legal or economic obstacles, it nonetheless reflects an element of corruption that is widespread in the telecommunications sector and other parts of the Russian economy.

Greater concern, however, was focused on blocked online content, particularly opposition-oriented websites.

Although attempts to establish a comprehensive, centralized filtering system have been abandoned, several recent cases of blocking have been reported. In December 2009, a number of ISPs blocked access to the radical Islamist website Kavkaz Center. At almost the same time, the wireless provider Yota blocked several opposition sites. The practice of exerting pressure on service providers and content producers by telephone has become increasingly common. Police and representatives of the prosecutor’s office call the owners and shareholders of websites, and anyone else in a position to remove unwanted material and ensure that the problem does not come up again. Such pressure encourages self-censorship, and most providers do not wait for court orders to remove targeted materials.

…

Content is often removed on the grounds that it violates Russia’s laws against “extremism.” Providers are punished for hosting materials that are proscribed in a list on the website of the Ministry of Justice. The list is updated on a monthly basis and included 748 items as of January 2011. The procedure for identifying extremist materials is nontransparent, leaving ample room for politically motivated content removal. There have been at least three cases of site closures, two of them temporary, on the grounds that the affected sites hosted extremist materials. In February 2010, the major opposition portal Grani.ru was checked for extremism, but the authorities apparently found nothing incriminating.

Among the most disturbing accounts in the report were cases of criminal suits and physical attacks against individual bloggers.

Since January 2009, police and the prosecutor’s office have launched at least 25 criminal cases against bloggers and forum commentators. While some cases were against individuals who posted clearly extremist content, others appear to be more politically motivated. The most severe and widely known sentence was that of Irek Murtazin, a Tatarstan blogger and journalist who received almost two years in prison in November 2009 for defamation.

…

While traditional journalists and activists have faced a series of murders and severe beatings in recent years, physical attacks on Russian bloggers and online activists have so far been comparatively limited. However, one recent event drew significant attention. In November 2010, Oleg Kashin, a reporter for the newspaper Kommersant who was also well known as a blogger, was severely beaten near his home in Moscow. His coverage of protests and political youth movements had prompted vocal responses from pro-Kremlin groups in the past, but it was not known exactly who was responsible for the attack.

Read the report in its entirety by clicking here.

In an interview on February 24, Posner spoke to GZT.ru about his plans to invite oppositionists who are effectively banned from appearing on state-controlled television onto his show. The first, he said, would be Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov, whom he planned to invite sometime in March.

“I plan to invite Boris Nemtsov. I’m definitely going to refer to the conversation with Putin that took place in the presence of [Channel One General Director] Konstantin Ernst and another 25 people from the channel,” Posner said at the time.

But on April 1, which happened to be Posner’s 77th birthday in addition to the end of March, Nemtsov wrote in a birthday greeting to the host that neither he nor fellow opposition leader Garry Kasparov had received an invitation to appear on the show:

“There’s a man named Vladimir Vladimirovich, whom it’s a pleasure to address. That man is you. When I was very young, I saw you for the first time on the Russia-America teleconference, where you- spoke with Phil Donahue and the American public in an absolutely professional, open and candid manner. It was striking, unusual and became etched into my memory. It was my first lesson in openness and glasnost. Many thanks to you for that. To be an independent journalist working on federal television – in our times, few people have the strength for that. Sometimes this miracle works out well for you. May god grant you good health and a long life, and Garry Kasparov and I will continue to wait for your call. I shake your hand.”

Posner himself was unavailable for comment.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin first announced that oppositionists may be allowed on state television during a meeting with the Channel One creative team on February 3. The next day Posner said he had asked the station’s management for permission to invite oppositionists onto the air, and a few weeks later announced his intentions to invite Nemtsov sometime in March. Garry Kasparov has expressed skepticism that the invitations would ever come.

“I plan to invite Boris Nemtsov. I’m definitely going to refer to the conversation with Putin that took place in the presence of [Channel One General Director] Konstantin Ernst and another 25 people from the channel,” Posner told the publication.

“As of now, I can’t say I’ve been told ‘no’ in regards to my wish to have oppositionists on the air,” he went on. “Inviting Boris Efimovich in February didn’t work out. I had already planned to have other people on. Why am I starting with Nemtsov? I see him as the most interesting and striking person from the opposition.”

Speaking to Kasparov.ru, Nemtsov said he has not yet received an invitation to appear on Posner’s show, which is simply called “Posner.”

“As of now, I haven’t received an invitation, but I’ll go to the interview; why not?” said Nemtsov. “It’s a live broadcast, otherwise I simply wouldn’t agree; another matter is that the live broadcast is shown in the east of the country and it’s possible that they could cut something out afterwards, having consulted with the Kremlin. It’s hard to control, but in this case it would be Posner’s reputation that would suffer, and not mine.”

Nemtsov said he expects the piece to be a fluff interview that would avoid any controversial topics. “I think the questions are going to be posed in such a way as to follow the general outline of the channel,” he said. “They’ll be about my health; my children.”

Posner said he also sees Eduard Limonov, leader of the Other Russia and National Bolshevik Parties, as another striking opposition figure – but does not plan to have him on his show.

“Limonov… it’s unlikely that I’d invite him, because I promised myself not to invite fascists,” Posner explained. “As long as he has the party banner that he has, he’s not going to be on my program.”

“I know what fascism is and what Nazism is. And when I see a person whose flag is a copy of the Nazi flag but has a hammer and sickle instead of a swastika in the middle – for me this is a definite, as they say nowadays, message. And I told myself: I’m never going to give these people speak,” the television host concluded.

Such sentiments represent both state censorship over television and Posner’s personal enmity, Limonov told Kasparov.ru.

“I think that there’s both censorship and enmity, even though Posner doesn’t know me. He called me a fascist, and that’s slander in general, which is disproved by my close cooperation with Garry Kasparov and many other honest people,” the oppositionist said. “The party that I head is the most repressed party; about two hundred of its members have gone through prisons and camps – in the past two years, 35 people have been convicted on the 282th article [banning extremism - ed.] alone.”

Kasparov.ru noted that Posner claims he has been threatened by members of the National Bolshevik Party. Limonov denied the accusations.

Posner also said he would like to host an interview with incisive liberal commentator and politician Valeriya Novodvorskaya.

“I would invite Novodvorskaya,” he said. “She, of course, is a frightfully brave person. She is a wonderful writer and has a wonderful sense of humor. But at the same time, she is totally radical. It seems to me that it’s very difficult to agree with her on anything. That is to say, everything is black and white to her, either/or; she doesn’t allow for any shades of gray. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t invite her on. It’s just that I understand how it could be difficult.”

It is also possible that leading Russian oppositionist Garry Kasparov could be invited on Posner’s show – he was among the original figures Posner referenced at the beginning of February – although GZT.ru pointed out that he hasn’t yet been invited. Kasparov himself expressed skepticism of the entire affair and discontent with the host’s objections to Limonov and other controversial oppositionists.

“It’s pointless to comment on Posner’s routine, seasonal promises,” Kasparov responded. “This isn’t the first time we’re hearing them. If I get an invitation, then I’ll go. It’s interesting that ’squeamish’ Posner doesn’t want to see Limonov on his show. On the other hand, he’s expanding his list with Novodvorskaya, ‘the boogieman of Russian liberalism.’ But has he heard of the names of [liberal blogger Alexei] Navalny or [Left Front leader] Udaltsov? Or does he not watch anything other than Channel One?”

Political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky sees Posner’s promise to invite oppositionists on his show as a manifestation of “Perestroika 2″ – a continuation of processes that began in 2010, when it became unfashionable for members of the more glamorous portions of Russian society to be associated with the government.

“This is a mature stage of protest, in which people who have spoken out against Khodorkovsky are beginning to speak out in favor of him or redact their objections,” the analyst explained. “Perestroika begins not when dissidents come out against the system, but when people who were recently loyal to the government come over to its moral and political opposition, like the Komsomol workers did in the ’80s.”

Acclaimed television host Leonid Parfyonov recently gave a highly critical speech of Russian media censorship at an awards ceremony back in November.

“Journalistic topics, and with them all of life, was definitively divided into what was allowed on TV and what wasn’t allowed on TV,” he said. “Each politically significant broadcast is used to guess the government’s goals and problems, its mood, attitude, its friends and enemies.”

While the speech was broadcast on national television, parts of it were cut, with the unedited version only available online.

As the main source of news for the majority of Russians, state censorship of television has long prevented opposition members from reaching as wide an audience as the ruling party, United Russia, is able to enjoy. Without that kind of exposure, their ability to convey messages to the public is severely limited.

So it was an interesting twist to hear Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin say he has no problem with oppositionists appearing on television.

In a meeting with Putin on Thursday, Vladimir Posner asked how the prime minister felt about showing oppositionists on Channel One. In response, Putin said he was not against it and was fine with the fact that “oppositionists lie when they’re on the media, in particular on certain radio channels.” As he put it, “somebody has to lie, because somebody wants to hear those lies.”

Posner specified that, when posing this question, he “had in mind such people as Boris Nemtsov or Garry Kasparov, and not Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Gennady Zyuganov.” Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov head the Liberal Democratic and Communist parties, respectively, and while they are technically opposition parties, they generally toe the Kremlin line.

“If Putin publicly answers my question by saying that he is not opposed to the opposition [appearing on television], it gives me the opportunity to tell the management of Channel One, to Konstantin Ernst’s face, that I would like to invite some specific people onto the air,” said Posner. He stressed that he would now be able to “repel any objections,” since he now has the proper “sanctions from the authorities.”

Ideally, doing this would not require spoken or written approval from the highest levels of government in the country, but “that’s not possible in Russia today,” Posner said.

He lamented that Putin’s rise to power has negatively affected his show Vremena.

“It was real, alive; we discussed relevant issues…but when Putin began to introduce, as they call it, the power vertical, it affected a lot, including the mass media. It gradually became harder and harder, first of all, to touch upon certain topics, and secondly, to say certain things, and I’ve ceased to enjoy the program,” said the host.

Speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday, Posner said he’d like to invite some opposition figures onto his show as soon as possible and that he’s already discussed this with Channel One management.

“I’m going to try right after this Sunday’s broadcast to have one person or another from the opposition come onto the show,” he said.

RT management insists that it provides a much-needed alternative viewpoint to narrow-minded Western journalism, but critics dismiss the channel as an obvious Kremlin propaganda machine. Aside from pieces that broadcast blatant lies about the Russian opposition, particularly United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov, the station’s website includes such features as the “Russian Women Guide,” which disturbingly fetishizes the trend of American men searching out Russian wives on the internet. In a section entitled “Feminism, Russian-style,” an RT commentator writes: “Russian women somehow achieved, without the angst and anger of the western women’s man-eating philosophy, a sense of freedom, independence and, I dare say, happiness that their bra-burning sisters sacrificed a long time ago on the great battlefield of the sexes.” This twisted piece of analysis whitewashes the reality of sexism in Russia, where, as a recent feature by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty pointed out, there is “domestic violence that’s so pervasive many see it as a normal part of everyday life, in a country where an old saying advises, ‘If he beats you, he loves you,’” and where at least 14,000 women die every year from domestic abuse.

A piece out this week by the Independent reveals much about the inner workings of this questionable enterprise:

Last month, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a well-respected US organisation that tracks hate groups and extremists in the United States, published a report about Russia Today. The group did not label the channel itself extremist, but said it gives undue airtime to conspiracy theorists and extremists. “Its slickly packaged stories suggest that a legitimate debate is under way in the United States about who perpetrated the 11 September terrorist attacks, for instance, and about President Obama’s eligibility for high office.”

The top brass at the channel, including editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, have denied this. “We don’t talk about 9/11 any more than US media discusses who was behind the 1999 explosions in Moscow,” she told the authors of the SPLC report, referring to the apartment block bombings that were a catalyst for the second Chechen war. “Moreover, our own journalists have never claimed or even as much as hinted that the US government may have been behind the tragedy of 9/11.”

This is not strictly true, as the report’s authors point out; not only do captions such as “New Yorkers Continue to Fight for 9/11 Truth” appear on screen during stories about the attacks, but on the last anniversary, the channel’s website published a four-part series entitled, “911 Reasons why 9/11 was (probably) an inside job”. A video of a recent interview with a “9/11 Truther” on Youtube is entitled, “Two planes didn’t take twin towers down”.

…

One employee of the channel told The Independent, on condition of anonymity: “I have mixed feelings about whether the channel is actually trying to provoke dissent among Americans. That seems the only logical reason to have some of these guests on and to spend so much time talking about these topics.

And if it’s not for provocation, it’s simply for the money – not that those two things are mutually exclusive:

On the other hand, Denis Trunov [the head of RT America] has said multiple times that his only goal is to get YouTube hits and he will have anyone on who will get Youtube hits. He has even suggested having porn stars on to talk about topics like Afghanistan, in the hope of getting hits.”

The strategy is apparently working.

“We now have more than 150 million views on YouTube, which is much higher than that of Fox News, CNN, Sky News or Reuters YouTube channels,” says Ms Simonyan. “Just a couple of days ago, RT made it into YouTube’s All-Time Top 100 Most Viewed Partners list, replacing President Obama’s channel.”

The article goes on to detail the outright censorship and bias handed down to staff by RT management – a charge readers may particularly remember following the station’s coverage of the 2008 South Ossetia War.

Several journalists at the channel have told The Independent that while some coverage of problems in Russia and sensitive issues is allowed, any direct criticism or questioning of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev is strictly prohibited.

With the start of RT America, observers have started to question the coverage of topics other than Russia. Some of the more bizarre moments on RT can sometimes be put down to youthful inexperience (such as the newsreader who clearly skimread the autocue too fast and referred to “North Korean leader King John the Second”), but sometimes it seems something more sinister is at play. One anchor told The Independent that during an interview with a leading scientist working on Aids he was repeatedly pressured by producers to “ask difficult questions” about the “evidence” that HIV doesn’t cause Aids at all.

The article can be read in its entirety by clicking here.