Departures of editors-in-chief

The editor-in-chief of Gazeta.Ru, Mikhail Kotov, has resigned. He does not talk about the reasons, but on Twitter, employees of the online publication report that the reason is disagreements with the new leadership. Information also appeared there that most of Kotov’s powers are being transferred to the current managing director of Gazeta.Ru, Dmitry Sergeev, but he told Lenta.Ru that he does not plan to be editor-in-chief and will begin looking for a new editor-in-chief in the near future. Dmitry Sergeev, the founder of the sports portal “Championat.com”, which together with “Gazeta.Ru” is part of the SUP Media holding, was appointed managing director of “Gazeta.Ru” in November 2011.

If Kotov’s departure is officially confirmed, then Izvestia reported the dismissal of another editor-in-chief on the same day, citing sources in the Kommersant publishing holding. Kommersant FM editor-in-chief Alexey Vorobyov has been fired. The radio station does not provide comments. A Lenta.Ru source said that, like previous dismissals in the holding, the current one is caused by disagreement with the principles of the editorial policy of the holding’s owner, Alisher Usmanov. One of the latest reasons was allegedly an interview with the former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov. In December 2011, the editor-in-chief of Vlast, Maxim Kovalsky, his deputy Veronika Kutsillo, and the general director of Kommersant-Holding, Andrei Galiev, lost their posts, and in the summer of 2012, the general director of the holding, Demyan Kudryavtsev.

Vorobyov's dismissal was later officially confirmed. The editor-in-chief of the Kommersant newspaper, Mikhail Mikhailin, told Interfax that the decision to leave the radio station’s editor-in-chief was made collectively and there is no politics here. Vorobiev himself explained his departure for personal reasons. It is remarkable that Dmitry Sergeev also appears in reports about the departure of Alexey Vorobyov, but the other one is the president of the Kommersant publishing house.

Following Vorobyov, the director of the information center, Mikhail Lukin, who worked at Kommersant for 15 years, left the publishing house.

Later it became known that its columnist Konstantin von Eggert had been appointed acting head of the radio station.