Alexander Lebedev is to appear in a Moscow court on charges of hooliganism after punching a rival on TV. Could it all end in jail for the super-rich former KGB man, who reinvented himself as a champion of the free press?
Sergei Polonsky, a former paratrooper who was one of the richest men in Russia before his real estate business failed, had, alleges Lebedev, been trash-talking everyone in the green room for hours before they got on stage. "Then he offered to hit me on the face, and then he moved sort of in my direction. I have been standing there for two hours. My wife was in the hospital because of some premature … we were expecting another baby. I mean, it's probably wrong the way I hit him." But hit him he did. It wasn't a live recording – he alleges that the TV company rang the Kremlin to ask if they should make it public, and the Kremlin said yes, enthusiastically. How does he know? "Surkov," he says. Vladislav Surkov, Putin's deputy prime minister and designer of Russia's "managed" or "sovereign" democracy, which allows only Kremlin-approved parties and candidates to take part in elections, was pushed out of his post the day before we meet; Lebedev called him immediately. "I offered him support."
