In the latest of the great newspaper wars of London, two lions of Fleet Street, Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Harmsworth (the fourth Viscount Rothermere), have been outflanked by a former Soviet K.G.B. officer, Aleksandr Lebedev...

Tackling the monster that is the London newspaper market, Lord Rothermere must at times feel like a character in one of the Friday the Thirteenth films trying to dispatch the unstoppable Jason. No sooner has he buried six bullets in the chest of thelondonpaper, than a new foe rises up in the form of Alexander Lebedev and his bid to turn the Evening Standard into a free daily with a circulation of 600,000 from Monday...

The Russian billionaire businessman Alexander Lebedev is also the proprietor of London's Evening Standard newspaper, which has now become a freesheet. What motivates a Russian oligarch to buy a British evening paper? What kind of man is he...

He owns London's leading newspaper, which today goes free, and has been a guest at No 10, but who is Alexander Lebedev? We talk to those closest to him about his rise to prominence. Alexander Yevgenyevich Lebedev's first foray into the British social scene, with his cheeky smile and laceless Converse trainers, was like a breath of fresh air to a nation that tended to associate visiting Russian businessmen with assassination bids and hyper-inflation in the football transfer market...

Two leading opposition figures say they have given up on Russia's election system altogether ahead of regional polls on Sunday, saying it makes a mockery of President Dmitry Medvedev's pledge to boost democracy. Former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev, now a banking and media tycoon, told Reuters that the campaign for Moscow city council elections had helped convince them it no longer made sense to run for office...

On 12 October 2009 The London Evening Standard will become the first quality newspaper in the world to go free. The number of circulated copies of the London Evening Standard will more than double from 250k a day to more than 600k a day. Alexander Lebedev, Chairman of Evening Standard Ltd, said: "I am confident that more than doubling the London Evening Standard's circulation and maintaining its quality journalism is what London deserves. An essential fabric of a free and democratic society is high quality journalism...

In last Friday's London Evening Standard, we announced that from Monday 12 October we will become the first quality newspaper in the world to go free. The response to the bold decision to increase circulation to 600,000 copies, making the quality paper accessible to more Londoners than ever before, has been welcomed by commentators and, most important of all, by readers...

If you build it they will come, top businessmen said as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued a plea for more foreign investment to speed up Russia's exit from the crisis...

Russian banking and aviation magnate Alexander Lebedev, owner of London’s Evening Standard, estimates that Russian bureaucrats have pocketed $500 billion in bribes in the past four years and corruption and red tape make Russia one of the worst places to invest on earth...

As I have recently become a father again at the age of 49 - my son Nikita is now four months old - my choice of where to holiday this summer was somewhat limited, as I often like to travel way off the beaten track. As a child I wanted to go and live with tribes in Borneo or Papua New Guinea whose way of living has been uninterrupted for thousands of years. We chose this year to rent a villa in Villefranche in the south of France...

Russia can only overcome a 'permanent crisis' of aging infrastructure and rampant corruption with a major Kremlin-backed reform program, billionaire businessman Alexander Lebedev said on Monday. Lebedev, an outspoken former KGB spy who made a fortune in banking, said the crisis had wiped the mirage that blinded many investors to Russia's true problems -- which he said were now more acute than during the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union...

While her husband fights for his political life, Sarah Brown put her best foot forward and dressed to impress at a star-studded charity fundraising ball. The Prime Minister's wife dashed from the D-Day beaches in Normandy to be at the glamorous Russian-themed Raisa Gorbachev Foundation gala in South-West London. She cut a stylish picture in purple as she joined entrepreneurs and guests from the worlds of the arts, showbusiness, politics and music for a lavish white-tie dinner at Hampton Court Palace...

The editors of Novaya Gazeta states that the shareholders of the newspaper - Alexander Lebedev and Mikhail Gorbachev - fulfill all their obligations, including financial ones, towards the stuff of Novaya Gazeta...

Alexander Lebedev, the new proprietor of the London Evening Standard, brought former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to the newspaper's offices this morning as he revealed he may in future float the title on the stock exchange. In chaotic scenes, and surrounded by photographers, cameramen and reporters, Gorbachev – a friend of Lebedev's – addressed staff in the Standard's newsroom, telling them Lebedev had his "full support"...

Mikhail Gorbachev today used a visit to the Evening Standard to call for a new era of international co-operation - and urged America to stop acting as the world's policeman. Speaking to the newspaper, the former leader of the Soviet Union revealed he is working on moves to reduce the world's stockpiles of weapons, gave his backing to Gordon Brown's attempts to solve the economic crisis and declared that David Cameron is not yet ready to take power...