Russian Media Called 'Empire of Lies'

MOSCOW, Jan. 10, 2007 — -- While the world buzzes with disbelief and fascination over the poisoning and death of a Russian ex-spy, the story has captured scant attention in Russia.

Ask any seemingly cosmopolitan Russians on a downtown Moscow street about their take on the international scandal, and they will most likely shrug and suggest that the former spy Alexander Litvinenko poisoned himself just to make Russian President Vladimir Putin look bad.

The apathy is emblematic of the overall state of public information in Russia today. The episode, which dominated front page news around the world for weeks, has received little attention in the Russian media, with most state-controlled outlets dismissing allegations of government involvement.

Jazz Ayvazyan, a 20-year-old computer programmer who lives in central Moscow, hadn't heard anything about the poisoning until he traveled to London for business a week after the story broke in early November. But he says he wasn't at all surprised to see that the news was suppressed.

"There is definitely no press in the pure meaning of this word in Russia at the moment," he said. "TV news looks like the Soviet propaganda from when I was an 8-year-old boy in the mid-'80s. I just stopped watching Russian channels and replaced them with Discovery kind of entertainment."

Ayvazyan is an example of how far Russians have come in the decade since communism fell. He drives a fancy car and travels often to Western Europe. But he said that despite the fact that he lives a comfortable lifestyle, he doesn't feel that he is living in a democratic country.

"People easily get confused about what's better," he said. "Ten years ago we were poor money-wise. But there was an attempt to establish real democracy with real freedom. Now we live better, earn more, have the right food, but the relationship with anything that can be called government -- police, tax agency, etc. -- is much worse. They now feel the power, and they are the power."

Ayvazyan said this power translates into a high level of corruption that infects every aspect of everyday life. He says he often has to bribe officials to get permits.