The Evening Star
A good way to waste money
Quoth Lebedev. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Let’s cleave though the “REDS take over our paper!” guff which I alluded to in my title to examine this peculiar investment.
When I saw the billionaire former state-stripper and current despised exile speak late last year his ideas were being kept firmly beneath his hat. At one stage he replied to a question asking him for “Concrete” plans to match his abstract and ideological criticisms of Putin’s centralising tendencies and he replied baldly that he had none. Additional to this the lack of amplification meant that even if he had opted to eluciate we might not have heard him.
But this is a big, bold move. A clear instance of him flexing the muscle endowed upon him by looting the corpse of the Soviet Union (or perhaps that should be him being one of the few permitted to butcher the rich carcass) and doubtless this is an acquisition of another outlet for his anti-Putin views to be aired through.
I know little of Lebedev’s exact politics (he was clearly a localist, but in Russian terms that could mean something far less significant, here…) but feel safe in the assumption that he’s less of a dull rightist than the Daily Mail group (which have gone from rightist stalwarts to sharing offices with The Independent and selling off their organs to the Russians), and with any luck this will manifest itself in the paper’s line. I don’t know whether he’ll be able to redeem the wretched rag, but there’s a possibility that at least in its last years those ubiquitous billboards can be devoid of “Ken = Terrorist” style fiascos.
I imagine that this news has unsettled Boris more than slightly.