President Putin heralded a return to the authoritarianism of the Cold War era yesterday when he finally succeeded in silencing the last independent voice in the country’s national media.

Scores of journalists resigned from the Ekho Moskvy radio station, a lone voice of dissent from the state controlled Russian media, when Gazprom, the powerful Kremlin backed gas monopoly, took over control of the station...

Oleg Panfilov, a media commentator, told The Moscow Times: “The Government has made it its aim to silence all media that still have the courage to criticise it and they are doing it systematically. There is no place for a radio station like Ekho Moskvy any more.”