Watchdog

The editor in chief of Ekho Moskvy radio, one of Russia's most prominent independent-minded media outlets, says a popular talk show hosted by a searing Kremlin critic has been pulled off the air due to censorship by the station's management.

The comments by Aleksei Venediktov come amid mounting concerns that the authorities are stepping up efforts to curtail hard-hitting investigative reporting and dissenting voices anywhere in the Russian media.

He announced on May 25 that a politically themed talk show hosted by Yevgenia Albats, a prominent journalist who is also editor of a weekly magazine that has investigated President Vladimir Putin's friends and family, had been taken off the air.

"I can confirm that the Yevgenia Albats' program has not been on Ekho Moskvy since May 1 due to the absence of a contract between the host and the general director."

Venediktov later said in a series of Tweets and interviews with Russian websites that Albats had refused to sign a contract with the station's general manager due to restrictions that included preapproval of all the questions she would be able to ask.

"I am furious," he told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Ekho Moskvy's broadcasts and web reports are widely followed in Moscow and a handful of other large cities. Under Venediktov, who is well-connected among Russia's ruling elite, the station has largely managed to maintain its independence, despite being owned by state-run energy giant Gazprom.

In an interview later in the day with Open Russia, an opposition website founded by once-jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Venediktov criticized the station manager.

"Under Ekho Moskvy's charter, it is the editor in chief exclusively who is responsible for editorial policy. All restrictions and additions to the rights and obligations of the journalists are my business, not that of the general director," he said.

Venediktov, who is a towering figure among Russia's journalism circles, did not immediately respond to a message from RFE/RL seeking further comment.

It wasn't immediately clear what prompted the conflict between Albats, a veteran journalist who is fiercely critical of Putin, and the station's general manager, Yekaterina Pavlova. Albats' magazine, The New Times, has published several investigations into corruption among government officials and the personal lives of Putin's daughters.

Albats, meanwhile, told Open Russia that the contract limited what questions she could ask, and suggested that Venediktov was not doing enough to support her position.

"I think that he has enough authority at Ekho Moskvy so that a contract could be signed that doesn't violate Russian laws on mass media, that don't violate the authority of the editor-in-chief, that don't end up contradicting the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which forbids censorship," she told the site.

Pavlova, who did not appear to make any public statement, could not be immediately reached for comment.

In a story on its own website, Ekho Moskvy said this was at least the second time in recent years that Pavlova has pressured one of its on-air journalists.

Russian media outlets have been repeatedly squeezed since Vladimir Putin first assumed the presidency in 2000.

Early in his first term, Putin oversaw the shuttering of leading independent national television channel NTV, which was taken over by Gazprom. Legislation passed by the State Duma in 2014 restricted foreign ownership of media outlets, affecting some of the country's most respected publications.

Other independent outlets have also come under pressure. The RBC media group, which has published investigative stories that linked Putin's daughter to a government-backed development project, saw its top editors resign en masse earlier this month after disputes with the company's management.

The resignations were widely seen as the result of pressure from the authorities, who had conducted a series of tax and other investigations into the company, which was bought in 2010 by billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov.

The release of RFE/RL journalist Khadija Ismayilova from an Azerbaijani prison has drawn applause from Western officials and international rights groups. But it also highlighted the plight of numerous other activists and journalists widely considered political prisoners who remain behind bars in the oil-rich former Soviet republic.

"This is a positive signal that can be replicated in other cases," Giacomo Fassina, a spokesman for European Parliament President Martin Schulz, told RFE/RL following Ismayilova's release on May 25.

Dozens of journalists, opposition activists, and other critics of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev remain behind bars in cases they and their supporters call retribution for their political activities. The U.S.-based group Freedom House says there are still more than 80 political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

Their arrests and prosecutions have come amid a broad clampdown on dissent in Azerbaijan over the past three years that has been condemned by Western governments and prominent rights watchdog groups.

At least five journalists considered victims of politically motivated prosecutions remain jailed on a range of charges, including alleged hooliganism and drug-related offenses, according to media-freedom groups and Western officials.

The office of Dunja Mijatovic, representative on freedom of the media for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), urged Baku in a May 25 statement to "release all remaining members of the media and bloggers still in prison today in Azerbaijan, including Seymur Hazi, Nijat [Nicat] Aliyev, Abdul Abilov, Rashad Ramazanov and Araz Guliyev."

Numerous political activists remain imprisoned as well, including several from the opposition Popular Front Party and the civic youth movement N!DA.

EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini's office said Ismayilova's release "marks a further step in progress toward Azerbaijan's compliance with its international commitments," and called for "the release and rehabilitation of all those currently imprisoned or under restriction of movement in Azerbaijan on political grounds."

Aliyev has demonstrated a willingness to heed calls for the release of those seen as political prisoners -- a label Baku has vehemently rejected.

Prior to the decision by Azerbaijan's Supreme Court to reduce Ismayilova's punishment to a suspended sentence, he issued a snap presidential pardon of 14 of these prisoners, including members of the N!DA civic youth group and human rights activist Rasul Cafarov.

But other N!DA activists remain in custody, including Bayram Mammadov, who earlier this month was charged with drug possession and placed in pretrial detention. Fellow N!DA member Giyasaddin Ibrahim, who was detained together with Mammadov, faces similar charges.

They were purportedly involved in writing graffiti on a statue of former President Heidar Aliyev in Baku ahead of Flower Day on May 10, which celebrates the late leader. Other N!DA members have previously been charged with drug possession.

The numerous Popular Party activists who remain jailed include the party's deputy chairman, Fuad Qahramanli, who was arrested in Baku in December. His lawyer said he was charged with publicly calling for the overthrow of the government and inciting ethnic, religious, and social hatred.

Other prominent critical voices currently imprisoned include Ilqar Mammadov, the leader of the Republican Alternative (REAL) movement who remains in jail despite a ruling by the European Court for Human Rights that his arrest was politically motivated.

Ismayilova's release came just three days before Azerbaijan celebrates its annual Republic Day with a mass amnesty, proposed by the country's first lady, that anticipates the release of some 3,500 prisoners convicted of minor crimes.

It remains unclear, however, whether those who are considered political prisoners might be freed, given the criminal nature of the offenses they have been charged with or convicted of.

The prisoners and their supporters say the criminal charges are trumped-up.