GQ magazine ‘censors’ its attack on Vladimir Putin

Conde Nast, the magazine giant that publishes Vanity Fair, Vogue and GQ among others, has been accused of timid self-censorship after it allegedly blocked the publication inside Russia of a highly critical article about Prime Minister Vladimir Putin by the American war reporter Scott Anderson.

The piece, commissioned and published by the US edition of GQ magazine, addressed the controversy surrounding the Moscow apartment bombings in which hundreds of Russians died in 1999. The Kremlin claimed the attacks were the work of Chechen rebels, but many liberals have long argued that the bombings were carried out by the FSB, the intelligence agency that replaced the KGB and which Putin (above left, with oligarch Oleg Deripaska) then headed.

By framing the Chechens, the argument went, Russia had an excuse to go back to war in Chechnya. This was popular with ordinary Russians and in August that year Putin, on the strength of his tough guy image, became president.

Conde Nast lawyers have stopped the American edition of GQ being distributed in Russia and the article - titled 'Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power' - is not available online.

Furthermore, the Russian edition of GQ is not carrying the article - though its editor, Nikolai Uskov, insists he chose not to because there was nothing new in it.

Uskov has a point: the conspiracy theory has been widely publicised, not least by Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB spy who was murdered in London in November 2006, and historian Yury Felshtinsky, who together wrote a book called Blowing Up Russia.

Also, Anderson's main source was Michael Trepashkin, a former FSB agent who investigated the bombings and has discussed the matter before. "There isn't any sensation in yet another article which goes back to the version of FSB participation in the bombings," said Uskov.

Anderson, speaking to Radio Free Europe about the Conde Nast ban on his article, said: "My personal feeling is that they were worried about reprisals against their Russian-language magazines in Russia, and this article could affect their publications there." ·