In a move which could give the Kremlin almost total control over Russian television, the natural gas company Gazprom has begun legal proceedings to take over the only large media group that opposes President Vladimir Putin.
Gazprom, which has close links with the Kremlin through the former prime minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, claims that the Media-Most group has reneged on an agreed takeover deal.
But the political machinations behind the move are Byzantine and involve a major dispute within Russia's Jewish community.
Media-Most controls NTV, the country's only independent television channel, the popular radio station Ekho Moskvy, the daily newspaper Segodnya and, in a joint venture with Newsweek, produces the weekly news magazine Itogi.
All the group's media outlets opposed Mr Putin in the presidential elections, and shortly after Mr Putin's inauguration masked members of the FSB secret police raided its Moscow headquarters.
Later the group's owner, Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, was arrested and held in Moscow's medieval Butyrka prison for a week. Conditions in Butyrka are so appalling that after a visit there last year Mrs Mary Robinson, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, said even being there amounted to torture.
After his release from Butyrka all charges against Mr Gusinsky were dropped and he headed off to join the rest of his family in Spain. The move instantly spawned rumours of a deal with the authorities, and yesterday Segodnya and the respected Izvestia newspaper published the text of what they claim was a "secret protocol" in which the Information Minister, Mr Mikhail Lesin, agreed to guarantee Mr Gusinsky "security, protection of rights and freedoms and the right to travel freely".
All Mr Gusinsky needed to do in return was to sell Media-Most to Gazprom for $300 million.
On Monday Mr Gusinsky went on his own Ekho Moskvy radio station by phone from Spain and said he regarded the document as invalid because he signed it under duress.
"The conditions for signing this deal were not only that I would not be returned to Butyrka, but freed from criminal investigation. I was set free like a hostage," he said.
Mr Gusinsky's credibility in the spheres of culture and religion was also challenged.
On Monday evening Mr Putin gave his presidential seal of approval to a vast new Jewish complex in Moscow constructed by the ultra-orthodox Chabad Lubavich movement. Rabbi Berl Lazar, who claims the title of Chief Rabbi of Russia, was there to greet the President.
Rabbi Adolf Shayevich of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organisations (CJRCO), which represents the large majority of Russian Jews, had been recognised as Chief Rabbi since the 1980s but now looks like losing out to Rabbi Lazar.
CJRCO is at a singular disadvantage in its bid to retain Kremlin recognition. Mr Gusinsky is its chairman.
