What has happened had been long predicted by media market experts. Strana.Ru is ceasing to exist in its former status. Word was circulated yesterday that the Internet projects, which had been created and supported by Gleb Pavlovsky's Fund for Effective Policies, were being handed over to the Internet board of the VGTRK television and radio company. Apart from Strana.Ru itself, the state television company is taking over its web periodicals, Vesti.Ru and SMI.Ru, the information center Ukraine.Ru, the information channel The Chechen Republic, the information resource InoSMI.Ru, and some other web media.

Although Mr. Pavlovsky's editions have always positioned themselves as official, ones reflecting and preaching nothing but the political line of the Kremlin, they nevertheless managed to preserve a definite degree of independence in their evaluations and judgment. That was, properly speaking, what made them interesting. More than that, Strana.Ru was regarded not only as just a well-informed web publication but also as a very influential medium reflecting a quite concrete position of definite power circles. It is common knowledge that many a high-ranking official used to start his morning Internet browsing by clicking on Strana.Ru. Will it keep its identity under Oleg Dobrodeyev?

It is obvious nevertheless that its transformation is a symbolic event occurring against the background of growing rumors about even larger-scale perturbations in the media market. It is rumored that we are at the threshold of a new era in the media business, a period of mergers and enlargements. State Duma and Federation Council insiders, for example, have been for weeks talking about the forthcoming merger of two state-owned television companies, ORT and VGTRK, the motive being that there are no longer coherent conceptual differences between the first and second channels and that it is costly and makes no sense keeping the twins. The same fate is predicted for ITAR-TASS and RIA Novosti, which presumably will be merged, the latter becoming the foreign-based branch of the latter. In a word, in the run-up to the federal elections the media market can await much upheaval.