Mikhail Gorbachev is still a man who strides the global stage – and maintains a keen interest in domestic politics. He talks to Ginny Dougary about power, presidents, Putin and life after Raisa...

One of the first things Geordie Greig did as the editor of the Evening Standard was knock down an internal wall to make a bigger, lighter room for morning conference. His top team call it glasnost, a nod to the Standard's new Russian billionaire owner, Alexander Lebedev. It also meant that the paper's news editor had to vacate his office and move down the corridor...

In an interview with British newspaper The Guardian last week, billionaire Alexander Lebedev announced his intention to set up two new Russian radio stations - one of which would broadcast in English. They would offer talk-based, public service-style programmes and be self-consciously uninterested in chasing a profit. But is there a place for another Russian or a new English-language station in today's Moscow...

The London Evening Standard's new owner insists that he is not interested in making money. So how, exactly, did the former KGB agent become a billionaire newspaper proprietor? Steve Busfield reports. The new owner of the London Evening Standard is a very unusual sort of billionaire, for he seems to care little for money. It might just be that I don't know enough billionaires and that having that sort of money makes you very casual about it. But, still, Alexander Lebedev seems remarkably easy come, easy go about his fortune...

The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, was in particularly urbane mood when questioned in the House of Lords yesterday about Alexander Lebedev's London Evening Standard takeover. "It is perhaps not ideal, but what is ideal these days in the newspaper world?" was his knowing response. Mandelson also revealed that the government was not consulted about the Evening Standard deal and told the Lords that the sale seemed the only option for keeping the paper alive. "We could only wonder what Vere Rothermere would have made of it, but that is, I'm afraid, a matter now only for speculation," he said...

The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, described the takeover of the London Evening Standard by the former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev as "perhaps not ideal". But he said: "Mr Lebedev seems to have been the only option in keeping the paper alive and I think we would all agree ... that maintaining the London Evening Standard in existence is in the interests of us all — the public interest and journalism in this country...

The new London Evening Standard editor, Geordie Greig, has marked his first day in charge by penning a piece to readers outlining how the paper's aspiration under new its owner Alexander Lebedev was to take a "fundamentally optimistic view of life" and become the "voice of London". Lebedev, the Russian billionaire and former KGB agent, officially took control of the paper on Friday, 27 February, after buying 75.1% of the loss-making title, for a reported £1, from former owner Daily Mail & General Trust...

Britain has a new press proprietor, but the odd thing is that, until a few days ago, few people knew much about the fellow, save that he was a "Russian oligarch" and "former KGB spy." His name is Alexander Lebedev, and he has just bought the Evening Standard...

Like the middle classes, that they mostly cater to, British newspapers are pretty good at keeping up appearances. So, we have ultra-glossy weekend supplements that run into hundreds of pages, an ever-expanding line-up of fat-cat columnists (never mind if what they write seldom rises above the level of Westminster Village chatter), and expensive design “revamps” every few months, the latest being a “new-look” Saturday Times. It follows a revamped Independent and The Independent on Sunday which, in turn, followed a revamped Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. (Or was it the other way round?)...

Alexander Lebedev makes a very reluctant oligarch. The new proprietor of the London Evening Standard says he has never owned a yacht or a football club, he doesn’t want a private jet or a marble palace. Vladimir Putin? He says he often criticises him and is always risking his position by speaking out about journalists killed in Russia...

“ANY report is good unless it is an obituary,” Mark Twain is said to have remarked of the popular press. Aleksandr Lebedev, a friendly Russian oligarch, was happy to quote the aphorism as he explained to an RT interviewer his thoughts on acquiring a 75% stake in the London Evening Standard. His New Media Holdings already owns 49%, with Mikhail Gorbachev, in a Russian publication, Novy Gazeta. An articulate and charming entrepreneur, Lebedev was anxious to advertise his credentials as a hands-off publisher –– a rare animal...

The Russian oligarch and former KGB agent who is London newspaper Evening Standard's new owner has denied he had bought the newspaper to influence British politics. Alexander Lebedev said he hoped his influence would be "zero" and the paper would be unbiased and objective...

The London Evening Standard's new billionaire owner has said he would like to invest in other newspapers - but the recession has left him a bit short of cash. In a TV interview, Alexander Lebedev outlined his plans for the loss-making evening title, including a £30m injection to see it "through the hard times" and a possible tie-up with the Novaya Gazeta, the Russian paper in which he owns a stake...

The Evening Standard is poised to up the ante in the newspaper war on London¹s streets by offering free and heavily discounted copies of its 50p daily paper outside train and Tube stations. The new business plan is the first significant move by the paper¹s new Russian oligarch owner Alexander Lebedev and his management team as they look to claw readers back from News International-owned thelondonpaper and Associated Newspapers¹ London Lite...

Evgeny Lebedev, the 28-year-old son of the K.G.B. agent turned oligarch Aleksandr Y. Lebedev and the new senior executive director of a London daily, The Evening Standard, took other senior editors from the paper out for lunch recently...

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...

A former KGB member turned businessman has bought the London based daily newspaper, The Evening Standard, which was founded in 1827, provoking debate in the UK media over the suitability of a man a Times source describes as "closer to those in power than he likes to admit publicly" to run a paper...

Alexander Lebedev, the new owner of the London Evening Standard, today promised to make the ailing title "more attractive" to readers and said he planned to pump "tens of millions" of pounds into the paper over the next two years. Speaking in Moscow a day after he bought a controlling stake in the paper, Lebedev said he planned to meet Standard journalists "very soon"....

Is Alexander Lebedev, a Russian billionaire and former KGB officer, a fit and proper person to own an influential British newspaper? On the face of it, there are two obvious objections. Many Russian oligarchs acquired their fortunes by murky means. Mr Lebedev also spied on Britain for a foreign power then regarded as an enemy and still viewed with suspicion...

Russian billionaire and ex-KGB agent Alexander Lebedev is buying the Evening Standard, a newspaper he used for information when he was a young spy based in London...

Aleksandr Lebedev, a Russian businessman and former KGB agent who was stationed in Britain during the Cold War, has agreed to buy a majority stake in The Evening Standard, an afternoon newspaper in London that has long been part of the fabric of the city...

The Russian suitor of a London newspaper professes to be a different kind of oligarch. Should we believe the former spy?...

Alexander Lebedev, the would-be proprietor of the Evening Standard, is Russia's most contrarian oligarch...

Former KGB man Alexander Lebedev says he will champion a free press as owner of the London Evening Standard...

The former KGB agent is now a mega-rich publisher and philanthropist who wants to do something for his country other than make more money. He would also rather like to own London's Evening Standard newspaper...

Billionaire and State Duma Deputy Alexander Lebedev acknowledged Wednesday that he was a source for a controversial Forbes Russia story about Inteko, the construction company headed by Yelena Baturina...