We have been nearly there before but it looks like this time it will happen: Alexander Lebedev, quondam KGB/FSB agent, present media tycoon and owner of the ever more silly and boring Evening Standard, will, it is said, announce in the next 24 hours that the Independent belongs to him. (The Guardian confirms the story.)
I know the BBC Russian Service gets quite excited about this and interviews me regularly but my responses tend to be quite monotonous (yes, yes, yes, I don't want to hear that): it really does not matter who owns the Independent. There is no evidence that the Evening Standard has become an outlet for pro-Russian propaganda (or an outlet of news at all), whereas the Independent, what with Mary Dejevsky, a much valued member of the Valdai Group, set up by the Russian Government, being its Chief Editorial Writer and Columnist, has been pushing a pro-Putin line for some time.
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