MEDIA MOST….

Government pressure on Media Most, Russia’s only substantial independent news voice, continues to mount. In May the company was raided by “tax police” in ski masks. In June federal agents arrested the group’s chairman, Vladimir Gusinsky, charging him three days later with fraud and embezzlement. The prosecutor general last week arrested Mikhail Aleksandrov, a Gusinsky aide, on charges of illegal possession of a weapon. And state-owned LUKoil announced it will sue NTV television, the most important Media Most property, for 10 billion rubles (about $350 million) in connection with an NTV segment about the 1997 death of a LUKoil vice president.