"I could not live with the indignity of having to pull an interview and then keep it a secret," Parfyonov said

MOSCOW, June 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - One of Russia's star political talk show hosts was fired Wednesday, June 2, after going public with news that the government put pressure on his network to kill an interview linked to Chechnya.

Some journalists and rights activists said Leonid Parfyonov's dismissal from NTV television marked the latest chapter in the Kremlin's battle to control media coverage since President Vladimir Putin first came to power four years ago, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Parfyonov was sacked and his Sunday Namedni talk show cancelled for revealing that his bosses received orders from the government to pull an interview with the widow of former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

Two Russian secret agent are standing trial in Qatar on charges of involvement in the assassination of the Chechen leader in Doha, where he was living in exile.

Russia has denied they were involved in the attack and is demanding their release.

The interview with Yandarbiyev's wife was aired by NTV television in Russia's Far East Sunday but was absent from the Namedni show that went on the air in Russia's European region.

"I was against their decision to ax the Yandarbiyev interview," Parfyonov told NTV television after signing his dismissal papers.

"I could not live with the indignity of having to pull an interview and then keep it a secret."

The company's director Nikolai Senkevich said he had to part ways with the newscaster "because of his serious breeches of contract ... and work ethics."

NTV television led its Wednesday morning news broadcast with its reporter's dismissal and quoted a brief statement from the company -- now majority owned by state-run Gazprom energy giant -- as saying Parfyonov was fired because he also broke company rules in the past.

"Parfyonov is undoubtedly one of Russia's most talented journalists, but this incident was not the first," Senkevich claimed.

A host of journalists and rights activists rose to Parfyonov's defense.

"The secret services have finished off a campaign they began a few years ago. There were only a few independent media sources left," lamented Sergei Grigoryants of the Glasnost Foundation that was founded in the late days of the Soviet era.

And the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement that "in view of the total censorship of all news of any kind about Chechnya, we are concerned about this latest move by NTV."

It was the second time in less than a year that management at NTV was reported to have ordered a controversial story killed.

The station fell under control of Gazprom amid a dramatic year-long battle in 2001 by its journalists to keep NTV's independence.

Prior to the takeover, NTV was one of the only independent Russian sources on Putin's war in Chechnya and general corruption in government.

Parfyonov decided to stay on at NTV after the takeover and eventually became host of a Sunday political show that -- while not always biting -- represented to many the last outlet of open television news.

In 1999, some 80,000 Russian troops poured into the Caucasus republic of Chechnya in what Moscow called a lightning-strike “anti-terror operation” but which has since degenerated into a grinding war with Chechen fighters.

The current conflict, the second war between Russia and Chechen fighters in a decade, has left 5,000 Russian soldiers dead -- 12,000 according to rights groups -- and killed thousands of civilians.

It has also driven tens of thousands of Chechens into exile within Russia and abroad.

Thousands of refugees from war-torn Chechnya live in battered tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia and refuse to return home because of continuing insecurity.