THE television screens went blank late in the evening of June 11th. The transmission failure was no accident. The Greek government had peremptorily closed down ERT, the state broadcaster, branding it a “haven of waste”. All of its 2,700 employees are to be sacked. A new, leaner organisation will replace it.

The move was abrupt and opposed by the two smaller parties in the coalition government. It came just as representatives of the troika—the IMF and European authorities administering Greece’s bail-out—arrived in Athens for another inspection of efforts to revive the economy and to shake up the public sector. The timing is unlikely to have been mere coincidence, the more so since there had been a serious setback to the privatisation programme earlier in the week.

For months Gazprom, a Russian energy behemoth, had been expected to gobble up DEPA, a gas supplier that dominates the Greek market. But at the eleventh hour Gazprom withdrew its interest, leaving no bidder at all. Although there was one offer for DESFA, which operates the gas grid and is a subsidiary of DEPA, a big hole has opened up in this year’s planned privatisation receipts of €2.6 billion ($3.4 billion). The sale of DEPA had been expected to raise close to €1 billion.

In fact the DEPAcle seems to have occurred partly for reasons beyond Greece’s control. European competition officials, already investigating Gazprom for breaching competition rules in eastern Europe, made it clear to the Russian energy giant that it would be closely scrutinised if it grabbed DEPA. This reflects broader unease about allowing what is in effect an arm of the Russian state to advance its interests in the EU.

Even so the setback seems to follow a wearily familiar pattern. From the outset the Greek privatisation programme has stumbled. An original target of €50 billion turned out to be wishful thinking and was drastically scaled back. In May the privatisation fund did manage to sell a stake in OPAP, a gambling monopoly, for €712m. But that success was marred by the fact there was only one valid bidder. These missteps hurt the economy as well as the public finances: big foreign investors are urgently needed to tackle inefficient firms and to realise some of Greece’s development potential.

In recent months there has been a remarkable change in perceptions about Greece. Even though its GDP shrank by 5.6% in the year to the first quarter of 2013, the narrative in the markets has switched from fears about a calamitous “Grexit” from the euro to hopes of an impending “Grecovery”. If nothing else, this week’s setbacks are a salutary reminder that the country remains economically frail and politically fragile.