Open letter of editor-in-chief of TV-6 information service Mikhail Ponomaryov to Yevgeny Kiselyov

Editor-in-chief of the TV-6 information service Mikhail Ponomaryov sent an open letter to acting general director of TV-6 Yevgeny Kiselyov which was published in the Izvestia newspaper on Tuesday, April 17. The newspaper notes that on Monday Ponomaryov announced his resignation from the post of editor-in-chief of the TV-6 information service which he has been holding since October 1999 if Yevgeny Kiselyov becomes general director of this TV company. In his open letter Ponomaryov asked Kiselyov to answer a number of questions. Ponomaryov writes that, in particular, Kiselyov and "some of his comrades scores of times repeated in different mass media and at the meetings in support of NTV that the crisis around this TV company is caused by the fact that NTV is the Only Private Independent Metre TV channel in Russia. And suddenly you and some colleagues of yours speak about your consent to start working at the TV-6 channel". "Does this mean that you and some of your colleagues deliberately lied to the thousands of people who came to support you?" Mikhail Ponomaryov asks. "Or have you put up with the defeat and are now ready to work even at the NOT the Only, NOT private, NOT independent and NOT metre channel?" Recalling that Kiselyov and his colleagues are claiming that they "have strength, money and determination to build a new television house 'from scratch'", Ponomaryov wonders why Kiselyov "does not wish to do it at the TNT TV channel which de facto belongs" to Media Most? Besides, Ponomaryov notes, Yevgeny Kiselyov and his colleagues "more than once stated that in the struggle for NTV they are ready to reach the top international judicial establishments". "Do you intend and do you deem yourself to be entitled to continue the court disputes with Gazprom for the TV channel which you have left at your own will and possibly in the rank of the head already of a different channel?" Ponomaryov also asks Kiselyov to answer the question if "he or Mr. Gusinsky told the NTV staffers that in any case (even in case of the most unfavourable developments) you have a 'reserve ground' at the TV-6 TV channel". Recalling Kiselyov's statement that he has money for the development of the TV-6 company, Mikhail Ponomaryov asks: "Does this mean that you have found investors who are willing to invest money in the TV channel, and does current master of TV-6 B. Berezovsky agree to accept this money? If so, how will your numerous comments in the Itogi programme on the immense damage which Berezovsky has done to Russia accord with the aforesaid? Have you revised your point of view on B. Berezovsky's personality?" In conclusion Mikhail Ponomaryov reminded Kiselyov of the fact that the other day Alfred Kokh had publicly called him a coward three times. "Why haven't you sent your seconds to Mr. Kokh yet? Or are you a coward indeed?", Mikhail Ponomaryov asks. As Izvestia reports, the newspaper turned over the text of Mikhail Ponomaryov's open letter to press secretary of the "NTV in exile" Maria Shakhova. But Kiselyov has not answered it so far.

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