MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti) - Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday he had bought a 49% stake in an independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, but pledged to put no pressure on editorial policy.
The architect of perestroika and the Soviet Union's sole president announced the acquisition of the bi-weekly edition at a news conference on the sidelines of a World Newspaper Congress in Moscow.
"We are against destroying or changing the 'voice' of the paper but for making its voice stronger and more convincing," Gorbachev said.
The 75-year-old former Soviet leader told journalists he had bought the stake with a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction in the lower house of parliament, Alexander Lebedev - a billionaire banker who ran against the incumbent mayor of Moscow in 2003.
The remaining 51% is held by the newspaper's staff.
The Novaya Gazeta bi-weekly with a circulation of 670,000 copies was set up in 1993 after it seceded from Soviet-era Komsomolskaya Pravda.
"We intend to publish [the paper] three times a week, and then every day," Gorbachev said, adding that the newspaper would also launch a new format on January 1.
