Sergey Dorenko

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Sergey Leonidovich Dorenko (Russian: Сергей Леонидович Доренко; b. October 18, 1959, in Kerch, Crimea, Soviet Union) is a Russian TV and radio journalist, famous for hosting his harsh and sometimes libelous weekly news commentary program in 1999-2000.

As in 1982 he had graduated from Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow, he served as a Portuguese-Russian translator in Angola.

In June 1984 he was drafted to the military, but was discharged in January 1985 due to health problems.

In April 1985 Dorenko became an employee of Gosteleradio (State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, the only TV and radio broadcaster in the Soviet Union).

In 1996 - 1999 he hosted Vremya, news commentary program on ORT. Being a close ally of Boris Berezovsky, who controlled ORT, In September 1999 - September 2000 Dorenko hosted influential weekly "Sergey Dorenko's program" on Saturdays at 9pm, and in November 1999 became a Deputy Director General of ORT. He was dubbed TV killer for being heavy on merciless attacks on Moscow mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, Yevgeny Primakov and their party Fatherland-All Russia, major opponents of Vladimir Putin and the pro-Putin party Unity during State Duma electoral campaign. [1][2][3].

In August 2000, however, his program criticized how the government handled the Russian submarine Kursk explosion. When Dorenko’s show was suspended on September 9, 2000, ORT director-general Konstantin Ernst insisted that, contrary to Dorenko's allegations, government had not been involved in the change, and that he yanked the show because Dorenko had defied his orders to stop discussing the government's plan to nationalize media magnate Boris Berezovsky's 49-percent stake in the network. [4] [5][6] Since then Dorenko has never been allowed to work for TV anymore. He became a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin's rule.

On September 30, 2003, in Stavropol Krai, Dorenko joined the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Since 2004 Dorenko has hosted several radio programs for Echo of Moscow.

In 2005, 2008 [7], a political fiction novel by Dorenko about an upcoming revolution in Russia, featuring President Vladimir Putin and Igor Sechin, a close ally of him, was published.

On May 23, 2007, Sergey Dorenko provided The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal with the full video tape of the interview of Alexander Litvinenko and his fellow employees of FSB recorded by him in April 1998, where the agents confessed that their bosses had ordered them to kill, kidnap or frame up prominent Russian politicians and businesspeople, and thus made it publicly available in full for the first time. Only some excerpts of the video were shown in 1998.^[1]