Citizens concerned by the threat to the freedom of speech in Russia argued that the financial pressure was inspired by the Vladimir Putin 's government , which was often subject to NTV 's criticism . Some tens of thousands of Russians rallied to the call of dissident NTV journalists in order to support the old NTV staff in April 2001 . Within the next couple of years , two independent TV channels which absorbed the former NTV journalists , TV-6 and TVS , were also shut down . In January 2003 , Boris Jordan was ousted as director general and replaced by Nikolay Senkevich , son of TV-presenter Yuri Senkevich from Channel One . A few days earlier he was also discharged from Media-Most director-general position , where he had replaced Alfred Kokh in October 2001 . As insiders claimed , Jordan was sacked because NTV had carried a live translation of the culmination of the Moscow theater siege in October 2002 and had been too critical of the way authorities handled it
Moscow theater siege
Moscow theater hostage crisis
NTV (Russia)