The head of Russia's state-owned RTR television channel announced his resignation Saturday but denied he was preparing to take charge at NTV in the wake of a management takeover that ousted dissident journalists.
Speaking from NTV headquarters, where the new government-linked management had just seized control of the building after a night-time swoop, Oleg Dobrodeyev said he was not planning to return to work for the station now controlled by Gazprom.
Dobrodeyev co-founded NTV and was general director when he left the station in January 2000 following a dispute over coverage of the government's military campaign in Chechnya.
Meanwhile dissident journalists ousted in the management swoop vowed to continue their fight against the takeover of Russia's last private television network.
A group of sacked NTV journalists began broadcasting news bulletins from the studios of Media-MOST subsidiary at 8:00 am (0400 GMT).
TNT's general director said the ousted journalists would broadcast news reports every two hours.
"We have set up a broadcasting signal not just to the Moscow region but also to a number of other cities," Pavel Korchagin said.
"We are proud that the NTV journalists are now working in our television station," he added.
Around 100 journalists from NTV gathered at the small channel's studios, where they vowed to set up a new television channel to maintain their independent editorial policy.
The journalists compared the management's overnight takeover of NTV headquarters to the failed August 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
"It was a coup d'etat," Vladimir Kara-Murza told AFP.
Elite interior ministry troops early Saturday replaced the NTV security service with a new team which at first prevented journalists from entering the building and then filtered them, allowing them to enter on a case-by-case basis, Interfax said – MOSCOW (AFP)
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