What kind of coincidence can it be for two middle-aged Russians with notable business acumen, Sergei Pugachev and Alexander Lebedev, to be buying at the same time two loss-making evening newspapers, one in Paris and one in London, each for each man's young son?...

"Novaya gazeta," which is partly owned by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and businessman Aleksandr Lebedev, is a rare publication in Russia these days. An independent national newspaper with its own highly popular website, it has become famous for its daring investigative reporting...

HOW about this for a thriller plot: an ex-KGB officer in London in the Soviet era returns 20 years later to buy the capital's main newspaper. Trained at the Red Banner Institute to find out secrets and exert influence at the highest levels of the British establishment, he is now part of it...

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev's agreement to bail out the once-mighty Evening Standard is further indication of an industry in decline. An industry that is now forced to turn to unusual alliances and co-operation agreements in the face of competition from freesheets and the internet...

A soft snow had fallen on Moscow. In the upmarket district of Kropotkinskaya, a white layer had crusted the statue of the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, settling on his shoulders. Outside the posh boulangeries and cafes, and on the giant dome of St Saviour's cathedral, whiteness had descended. Nearby, the Kremlin's ochre walls and towers sparkled...

London Lite was launched in 2006 to counter News International's attempts to undermine the Evening Standard by launching thelondon- paper  freesheet. But Peter Williams, finance director at DMGT, denied London Lite is now set to close. He claims it is losing less money than last year and said that DMGT would not have made the deal with Lebedev if it had compromised the free paper...

Everything is getting cheaper during the economic crisis -- even membership rights to the British elite. Before the crisis, oligarch Roman Abramovich paid over ?500 million for this privilege, but it cost fellow oligarch Alexander Lebedev much less. Last week, Lebedev reportedly bought The Evening Standard for only 1 pound at face value and 25 million pounds to cover expenses...

As we know, most of the world's wealthy have a connection to Bernard Madoff in some way. Alexander Lebedev, the new billionaire owner of the Evening Standard, suggests to us one of his close friends – a well known figure in Hollywood – has lost a large part of his or her fortune to the alleged fraudster...

Alexander Lebedev, the latest British press baron, is a man of charm and fluency. On each of the handful of times I have met him, he has given the impression of one who is a critic of the authoritarian and chauvinistic tendencies in Russia - an impression conveyed with a command of the English language that includes the use of nuance and pun...

A footnote to the sale of London's Evening Standard to Alexander Lebedev, who's been written up as a former KGB agent but is these days a smooth operator with a social conscience. City man and educational philanthropist Justin Byam Shaw, one of the directors of Lebedev's UK holding company...

"I've read the line, 'I'm from the KGB, give me your paper!' This humour is one of the best things about the British media." Alexander Lebedev has a well-documented KGB past , but so far this is the only clue to the London Evening Standard's new proprietor's sense of humour...

Everything connects, surely? This week Lord Carter, communications minister and former boss of Ofcom, launches a Digital Britain where public service journalism still flourishes. Last week Ed Richards, his successor at Ofcom, produced his parallel prescriptions...

If you think The Times looked a bit different today, wait till you get a load of what's about to happen over at the Evening Standard, which was purchased this week by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev. Now, I do not expect you to be any more interested in the ownership of newspapers than I am the ownership of, say, hairdressing salons...

For those steeped in Le Carré lore of East-West confrontation, the K.G.B.’s alumni never quite struggle free of their thuggish old outfit. Once K.G.B., the adage goes, always K.G.B. Certainly that idea surfaced frequently when Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer in self-exile in London, was poisoned with polonium and died an excruciating death just over two years ago...

Journalists on Russia’s leading investigative newspaper are being made targets for assassination in a bid to force its closure, one of its owners said yesterday. Alexander Lebedev said that at least three reporters on Novaya Gazeta, the opposition paper that also employed Anna Politkovskaya, had been assigned bodyguards because of fears for their lives...