Stukalin Fired From Newspaper

Monday, September 19, 2005
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer

Kommersant supervising editor Vladislav Borodulin said Friday that he had fired the paper's editor, Alexander Stukalin, whose ouster was signaled in a major reshuffle in June.

Borodulin, who has been identified in Kommersant's editorial masthead as the paper's editor since last Monday, had the responsibility of deciding whether Stukalin should stay with Kommersant after its owner, Boris Berezovsky, said Stukalin should go.

"Alexander Stukalin was offered the chance of working in another position in the publishing house in new interesting projects" but had not responded, Borodulin told Interfax on Friday.

Neither Borodulin nor Stukalin could be reached for comment Friday.

Stukalin's name stopped appearing in the masthead last Monday. Instead, Borodulin was identified both as supervising editor and editor. A secretary in Borodulin's office said by telephone Friday that Stukalin was fired in July. In a June interview in Kommersant, Berezovsky said Stukalin would have to go.

Stukalin, 36, had worked for the newspaper since 1992. He was appointed editor in May 2004 by supervising editor Andrei Vasilyev. This June, Vasilyev, then also the paper's general director, was appointed to head Kommersant's Ukraine edition.

Stukalin was a man from Vasilyev's team, said Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of Russian Union of Journalists.

Many believed that Borodulin would take a tougher editorial line against President Vladimir Putin and his policies, but this has not happened, Yakovenko said. Instead, the quality of the paper's analysis has suffered, he said.

"Today, Kommersant ... is no more critical of the government than state-owned Izvestia," Yakovenko said. "After Vasilyev left, the paper's reporting lost its depth and expertise."

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/09/19/011.html