“Dear David, there is precarious situation here so please publish my thoughts anonymously. In particular, the parliament just passed a bill that restricted foreign ownership in Russian media companies to 20%. Written actually in the president's administration, it seems to be aimed particularly at Vedomosti (since this newspaper is owned by Dow Jones, Financial Times and the largest Russian publishing house Sanoma Independent Media, in its turn owned by Finnish Sanoma, though Sanoma is currently selling its assets in many countries including Russia due to financial problems). And care they not that if carried out strictly, this law will kill huge parts of Russian media sector since all major publishing houses are foreign-owned - by Sanoma, Hearst, Axel Springer, Conde Nast. So, there will be no Cosmopolitan, GQ, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Vogue, Seasons and dozens of other magazines, even no Metro newspaper. And no TV channels such as Discovery, Viasat, National Geographic, Animal Planet, etc. And no Russian TV company CTC Media which is traded on Nasdaq (ironically, Putin's sanctioned friend Kovalchuk owns 25% of CTC Media through Cyprus offshore, and about 37% is owned by Swedish MTG). Foreign owners are really shocked and are thinking now how to restructure their operations and ownership structures. This is a difficult process, as you can imagine.”

David Fuller's view

Many thanks for this report.  Do I assume correctly that these regulation changes and bans are mainly reprisal sanctions, or is Putin also closing Russia off in terms of outside media?  Also, how is Putin explaining the removal of external magazines and TV channels to Russians, who previously read and or subscribed to these publications?