ON FRIDAY May 13th, Vladimir Putin celebrated the 25th birthday of the Russian television conglomerate VGTRK, the nerve center of the Kremlin’s state media machine. “Monopolies are always harmful, and in the information sphere especially so,” he told the executives gathered in Sochi. The (unintended) irony was only underscored by a piece of news from back in Moscow that day: the top editors at RBC, a media group whose hard-hitting investigations touched Mr Putin’s family, had been forced out. The final straw seemed to be a story examining the construction of an oyster farm near an opulent Black Sea property known widely as “Putin’s Palace”.

RBC’s fate came as no surprise. Over the past two years, under the ambitious leadership of Elizaveta Osetinskaya, the once-floundering conglomerate established itself as both influential and independent—a fatal combination in today’s Russia. RBC’s news site became the most cited in the country, its news wire a trusted source for business, and its TV station a rare bastion of objectivity. Meanwhile, RBC’s investigative journalists dug into taboo topics others did not dare touch: Russian soldiers fighting in eastern Ukraine; the finances of the Russian Orthodox Church; and the business arrangements of a woman alleged to be Mr Putin’s daughter and her husband.

The government’s displeasure with RBC’s editorial policy was no secret to the paper’s owner, the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov. The pressure escalated this April, after RBC published a front-page report, illustrated with a large picture of Mr Putin, on revelations from the Panama papers that Sergey Roldugin, a cellist and close friend of the president, had stashed some $2 billion in offshore accounts. Dmitry Kiselev, the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, brandished a copy of the paper on his flagship Sunday night broadcast and denounced RBC as “assistants” of America. Questions began to arise about “whose side we were on,” says Ms Osetinskaya. “But I believe that information isn’t on anyone’s side, information doesn’t belong to anyone.”

The state thought otherwise. Agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) soon showed up at the offices of the Prokhorov-controlled Onexim Group, ostensibly in connection with tax fraud. An investigation was opened into one of RBC’s sister companies. Ms Osetinskaya, who is bound for a fellowship at Stanford University this fall, took early leave. “It is war. What do you want?” one government official told Vedomosti, another influential business daily. (Vedomosti, once a joint venture with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, recently underwent an ownership change following the passage of a law limiting foreign ownership of Russian media.)

Last week, the confrontation came to a head. Maxim Solyus, editor of the RBC newspaper, was asked to leave; Ms Osetinskaya and Roman Badanin, editor of the news agency, quit in solidarity. RBC’s managing director said the decision stemmed from disagreements on “a number of crucial issues”. The Kremlin denied it had pressured RBC; a deputy minister of information said the move was economically, not politically motivated. But their spin fell on deaf ears. “It’s a clear signal that there truly are topics that are dangerous to touch,” says Ms Osetinskaya.

Since taking office in 2000, Mr Putin has prioritised control over the media. One of his first steps as president was consolidating control over television. In recent years, popular news sites such as Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru have been systemically neutered. The Kremlin still tolerates the existence of some independent outlets—chief among them the TV channel Dozhd and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Yet both have relatively small audiences and an unabashedly opposition-minded editorial line.

The cruel paradox of Ms Osetinskaya’s tenure at RBC is that success carried a death sentence. With a focus on business and a consciously even-handed style, RBC’s coverage reached an audience beyond Moscow’s marginalised liberals. Its journalism ultimately proved too visible and too autonomous for its own good. Yet as the Panama papers demonstrated, the desire to control information ever more often runs up against the reality of life in the internet age. The Kremlin won the battle, but free information may yet win the war.