'I Am Not So Pessimistic'.(Yevgeny Kiselev, general director of Russia's only independent TV station)(Brief Article)(Interview)

NTV's embattled director general, Yevgeny Kiselev, spoke to NEWSWEEK's Christian Caryl about what his station's fortunes mean for Russia. Excerpts:

CARYL: Why is an attack on NTV an attack on freedom of speech in Russia?

KISELEV: NTV is currently the only independent TV station in Russia that broadcasts throughout the country...NTV is the only TV company of the three national TV companies that [criticizes] Putin. I would like to emphasize that it's not our goal to criticize the president, but we are the only ones who are not charmed by the president--and this has become an illness in Russian journalism...It's considered almost bad taste to speak about his obvious mistakes, his faults, about worrisome tendencies in his domestic and foreign policy, the fact that blood continues to be shed in Chechnya, that not all citizens of Russia welcome the alarming tendencies in our foreign policy, the worsening of the relations with the United States and other Western countries.

Your opponents, including Gazprom representative Alfred Kokh, say this is a purely commercial dispute, that this is only business. How do you respond?

Kokh is lying. This is a political task assigned by the Kremlin...They use the expression the "NTV project"--it's an operation to seize NTV from its previous owners and establish state control. Essentially, it's a matter of nationalization through Gazprom.

Last week, as Gazprom was about to hold its shareholders' meeting to prepare for its takeover of your company, a judge in a district court ruled in your favor in a crucial case--and then reversed himself over night. Was he pressured by someone in the government?

I can only guess, but the pressure is exercised by other, higher ...