The five editors – Dmitry Simakov, Boris Safronov, Philip Sterkin, Kirill Kharatyan and Alexander Gubsky – all served as Shmarov’s deputies, Vedomosti reported.“We do not find it possible to work with an editor-in-chief who with his actions has shown that he doesn’t care about rules, standards and principles,” Safronov, a deputy editor-in-chief who has worked for the paper since 1999, told Reuters.
One reporter in April publicly complained that Shmarov had forbidden negative coverage of President Vladimir Putin’s plans to change the constitution so that he could potentially stay in power until 2036, and said that Shmarov had threatened to fire those who defied the ban. Shmarov told Reuters at the time that he had not threatened to sack anyone and that his editorial decisions were his own and not the result of any instructions given by anyone else, including from any government or business structure.