MOSCOW — The retribution against one of Russia’s most popular independent online news organizations, Lenta.ru, was as swift as it was unexpected. And to many it served as an ominous warning about the state of the media today as the conflict over Ukraine deepens.  On Tuesday morning, the country’s media watchdog formally cautioned the website after it published an interview with the leader of a Ukrainian nationalist organization that Russia has denounced as fascist. By afternoon, the site’s editor for the last decade was ousted and replaced by another editor viewed as more loyal to the Kremlin.  Lenta.ru, known for aggressive coverage in a media dominated by state-owned or controlled news outlets, announced the departure of its editor, Galina Timchenko, without explanation, but it soon posted a letter of protest signed by 79 members of the site’s staff, blaming “direct pressure” from the Kremlin for her dismissal.  “Over the past couple of years the space for free journalism in Russia has decreased dramatically,” the statement said. “Some publications are controlled directly from the Kremlin, others through curators, still others by editors who fear losing their jobs. Some media outlets were closed. Others will be closed in the coming weeks.”  The statement read like a mass resignation, though it remained unclear how the organization’s staff — or its editorial policy — would be affected.  Lenta.ru is owned by a media company called Afisha-Rambler-SUP, controlled in part by Aleksandr Mamut, a Russian billionaire. The company also owns the country’s most popular blogging site, LiveJournal, which was soon filled with laments about the editorial shake-up. An official at the company declined to comment.  The government’s efforts to control the media under President Vladimir V. Putin are hardly new, but as the turmoil in Ukraine unfolded in recent months, a series of decisions have raised fears that the Kremlin intends to tighten its grip beyond the dominant television networks that shape its message.  In December, Mr. Putin dissolved the official state news agency, RIA Novosti, and now is reorganizing a new one under a television executive and host, Dmitry K. Kiselyov, who is best known for virulent commentary on various foreign conspiracies he and others say are threatening Russia.  In January, the independent online television network, Dozhd, or Rain, was dropped by most of the country’s cable providers, ostensibly for conducting a poll that asked if the Soviet Union would have been better off surrendering Leningrad during World War II, rather than enduring the siege by Nazi Germany. It is now struggling to survive.  A month later, the long-serving executive director of the radio station Ekho Moskvy, perhaps the most prominent opposition news outlet, was replaced by a senior editor of the state radio network, Voice of Russia.  “The problem is not that we have nowhere to work,” the statement by Lenta.ru’s staff said. “The problem is that it seems you have nothing more to read.”  Russia’s media watchdog, known as Roskomnadzor, warned Lenta.ru that it had violated Russia’s laws against promoting extremism in the media. Two warnings are grounds for repealing its license. It cited an interview with Andriy Tarasenko, the leader in Kiev of the nationalist coalition, Right Sector, which played a prominent and, some have charged, violent role in the protests against the government of Viktor F. Yanukovych.  The interview, published Monday, carried the headline “We are Not Armed Forces.” It has since been removed from the site. The reporter who conducted the interview, Ilya Azar, said a telephone interview that he intended to quit rather than to work under the new editor.  Lenta.ru was also warned for linking to remarks by the group’s leader Dmitro Yarosh. A court here effectively indicted him in absentia on Wednesday for promoting extremism in Russia itself and said it would seek an international arrest warrant.  Mr. Yarosh and others have been denounced as fascists, radicals and anti-Semites by a relentless media campaign on state television networks that has sought, in keeping with Kremlin policy, to discredit the new government in Ukraine.
A popular independent online news site, Lenta.ru, got a warning from the government about its Ukraine coverage, and then a new editor.