Support Russia’s free media – while you still can

Last week’s Russian Economic Forum in London was a fiasco. The Kremlin, sending a sharp signal to the UK government, made all the top Russian visitors pull out at short notice.

That is a satisfying come-uppance for the morally myopic businessmen who shun any mention of Russia’s political problems. But it also highlights the Kremlin’s ominous use of commercial clout to influence decisions abroad.

Should the UK allow Boris Berezovsky to keep up his ill-phrased assault on Vladimir Putin’s regime from his Mayfair eyrie, or should he be encouraged to move abroad? Is it really in the public interest for the UK to issue arrest warrants for a couple of well-connected Russians who seem the likely culprits in the radioactive poisoning of Aleksandr Litvinenko?

The British business view on these issues is a sorry mixture of pleading and panic: just give the Kremlin what it wants, so that we can get back on the gravy train. It’s the same story all over Europe. During the Cold War, the capitalists and the freedom-fighters were on the same side. Now that alliance is broken, and the cause is muddier.

It is easy to conclude gloomily that the Kremlin has all the cards: oil, gas, money, decisiveness. The west is distracted, easily intimidated, and even more easily bought.

But counterattack is possible. New Times (www.newtimes.ru) is pretty much the only truly independent weekly left in Russia. Its website carries footage of the Kremlin’s bully boys beating up opposition demonstrators - pictures that no Russian television channel carried. Its editorial staff includes two of the remaining leading lights of Russian independent journalism: Yevgenia Albats, the country’s best investigative journalist; and Raf Shakirov, fired from the editorship of Izvestia, once a top Russian daily, for his coverage of the botched anti-terrorism operation in Beslan.

The magazine is not perfect: some may find it too wordy, or self-important, or shrill. But at least it is independent: it has no ‘sponsors’, no ‘roof’. The publisher, Irena Lesnevskaya, was told by a top Kremlin official that hiring Albats was a "mistake". Almost any other magazine in Russia would have hurried to correct the mistake. Lesnevskaya politely refused.

Sympathetic outsiders who read Russian might consider subscribing. Every little helps. But what New Times really needs is advertisers. And in Russia now, nobody wants to risk incurring the Kremlin’s displeasure. Advertising in New Times would be commercial suicide, Russia’s top business people explain, while insisting that privately they are devoted to the cause of press freedom.

The only people who can help are those who have nothing to lose. It is time for Polish sausagemakers, Georgian wine producers, and Estonian sprat-canners to step forward for their unlikely moment of glory. They have suffered Russia’s spiteful boycotts and bans for months. Diplomacy has got them nowhere. They are mostly now thriving in other markets. So why not hit back, by taking out advertisements in New Times. "Dear Russian customers! We are sorry we can’t sell you our products right now - but please rest assured, we will return to you as soon as better times allow."

The cost would be tiny relative to the psychological impact. Perhaps the tourist authorities could join in, underlining the welcome that awaits Russian visitors - sometimes to their surprise - in Warsaw, Tallinn and Tbilisi. Even Putin’s Russia will not touch the freedom to travel, leaving little scope for Kremlin revenge.

Outsiders cannot stop the Kremlin closing the New Times if it wishes. But they can at least help make it a commercial success.

• The writer is central and eastern Europe correspondent of The Economist.

Last week’s Russian Economic Forum in London was a fiasco. The Kremlin, sending a sharp signal to the UK government, made all the top Russian visitors pull out at short notice.

• Primary Source