Ousting of Galina Timchenko at Lenta.ru is latest move in what critics fear is a crackdown on left-of-centre media outlets

In what appears to be part of a growing state crackdown on liberal media, the editor of a major independent Russian news website has been replaced by a Kremlin-friendly editor after running an interview with a controversial Ukrainian nationalist.

Lenta.ru announced on its site on Wednesday that Galina Timchenko, who had worked there since its founding in 1999, would immediately be replaced by Alexei Goreslavsky, the former editor of the pro-Kremlin internet publication Vzglyad. Goreslavsky is currently deputy general director for external communications at the Afisha-Rambler-SUP media holding that owns Lenta.ru.

The news came only hours after the state communications watchdog issued a warning to Lenta.ru over a recent interview with Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Ukrainian ultranationalist paramilitary group Right Sector, which played a key role in the protests that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. The Investigative Committee of Russia, the country's main federal investigator, has charged Yarosh, who recently announced he would run for president in Ukraine's May elections, with inciting terrorism over a post on a Right Sector social network page that called on Russia's most-wanted terrorist, Doku Umarov, to "activate his struggle."

But a letter posted on Lenta.ru and signed by 69 employees and correspondents said Goreslavsky's appointment amounted to "direct pressure on the Lenta.ru editorial staff" and a violation of censorship laws. Lenta.ru's editorial policy, which embraced controversial topics and was often critical of the Kremlin, won the site a wide readership, including 13.6 million unique visitors last month, according to Rambler.ru rankings.

"This is absolutely a political situation," said Lenta.ru's night editor, Pavel Borisov. "Galina Timchenko was the best editor-in-chief I ever had. I don't plan to work with Goreslavsky." The change in editor came with no warning, he added.

For years, state-controlled structures have kept a tight hand on Russia's major television channels, whose coverage of the Ukraine crisis has hewed to the Kremlin line that violent chaos and neo-Nazi groups are on the rise and pose a threat to Russians there.

But recently several alternative news outlets have also come under pressure. In December, conservative television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov, who notoriously called on air for the hearts of gay people who die in car crashes to be burned, was appointed head of a new state news agency called Rossiya Segodnya, which is set to absorb the relatively independent state news agency RIA Novosti.

Last month the liberal independent television channel Dozhd, which has devoted much coverage to opposition protests in Russia as well as the Euromaidan protests in Kiev, was dropped by major cable operators after a viewer survey asking if the Soviet Union should have surrendered Leningrad to the Nazis to save lives. The channel's general director said cable operators had admitted privately that they stopped carrying Dozhd after calls from the presidential administration.

Shortly thereafter, the general director of the popular liberal radio station and website Ekho Moskvy, which is controlled by state gas giant Gazprom, was replaced by the senior editor of the stridently pro-Kremlin government radio station Voice of Russia.

Media analyst and popular blogger Oleg Kozyrev said the recent shake-ups at liberal news outlets were "a form of censorship" by owners whose business interests are beholden to the Kremlin.

"From the start the people who have started to own media outlets understand that they're acting on certain conditions," he said. "Now the time is coming for them to fulfil what they were ready to fulfil from the beginning."

The crackdown may be spreading to social media and blogs, Kozyrev said. In January, the founder of Russia's most popular social network, VKontakte, was forced out, and the company came under the control of Kremlin-friendly oligarch Alisher Usmanov.

The media crackdown will get worse if the west passes sanctions against Russia, Kozyrev predicted.