Gorbachev buys stake in paper critical of Putin

MOSCOW, June 8 (Reuters) Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the demise of the Soviet Union, says he has bought a stake in a Russian newspaper critical of President Vladimir Putin, local media reported today.

Gorbachev and Alexander Lebedev, a former spy and businessman turned deputy for the pro-Putin United Russia party, said they had bought a 49 per cent of Novaya Gazeta, a weekly known for its fierce opposition to the Kremlin.

''Together with my comrade Alexander Lebedev we acquired 49 per cent of Novaya Gazeta,'' Gorbachev said, Kommersant daily reported.

''The question arises: will the paper preserve its face? Our answer is simple: the editorial has the controlling stake.'' Novaya Gazeta has published scathing reports about the Kremlin's handling of the conflict in Chechnya, the attack on former YUKOS owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky and official corruption.

Gorbachev policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were aimed at reforming the ailing Soviet Union, but they helped accelerate its collapse.

Gorbachev was on poor terms with Boris Yeltsin, first president of post-Soviet Russia, but he has been courted by Putin who has sought his advice on a number of occasions.

Gorbachev has praised Putin's attempt to unite Russia's Soviet past with the present, but has sometimes seemed uneasy about the Kremlin's drive to boost control over the media.

A long term fan of Novaya Gazeta, Gorbachev bought 10 per cent of the paper while Lebedev bought 39 per cent. Editorial staff will keep the remaining 51 per cent of the paper's shares.

Lebedev, who once worked as a KGB spy but turned to finance and then politics, said the purchase would help civil society.

''It is our contribution to building civil society,'' Lebedev said. ''We consider the publication rather objective and influential.'' ''We will be, to the best of our ability, guarantors that the paper will fall to neither oligarchs nor the state,'' he said.

Reuters KD RS1527