MOSCOW - Anti-terrorism legislation passed by Russia's upper house of parliament this week threatens to unravel Russia's fragile democracy if it is signed into law, liberal lawmakers and free speech advocates said Thursday.

They said the amendments to the law on fighting terrorism and the media law, which would limit coverage of anti-terrorism operations and prohibit media from carrying rebel statements, are a litmus test for President Vladimir Putin's commitment to civil society.

"This is a moment of truth for the president. He must decide which side he's on - either he is on the side of civil society, the free press and democratic freedoms, or he is on the side of incompetent bureaucrats," said lawmaker Sergei Mitrokhin of the Yabloko party.

The amendments would prohibit the media from distributing information that hinders counter-terrorist operations, reveals tactics used in such operations or reveals information about people involved in them.

They would also ban the publication or broadcast of "statements by individuals that are aimed at hindering a counter-terrorist operation and/or justifying resistance to a counter-terrorist operation" and other "propaganda or justification of extremist activity."

Mitrokhin and leaders of the Russian Union of Journalists said the amendments were so broad that they could be used by authorities to shut down any media outlet that irks them.

Russia's non-state media already face frequent harassment, including criminal investigations and searches, assaults against journalists and even apparent contract killings.

The Union of Journalists said Thursday that two regional newspapers, Zvezda in the Ural Mountains city of Perm and Guberniya in Petrozavodsk in the northern Karelia region, were recently prevented from appearing after the Federal Security Service, or FSB, searched their offices and seized their servers.

Earlier this month, the FSB seized the server of the muckraking weekly Versiya in Moscow and called its editor in for questioning.

The legislation approved by the upper house Wednesday had been submitted to the lower house before last month's hostage crisis at a Moscow theater, but those events provoked further debate about the media's role.

Officials criticized the media for airing telephone interviews with hostages and hostage-takers and for showing the comings and goings of top officials in live broadcasts from outside the theater. One television station was shut down briefly for publicizing possible escape routes for the attackers.

Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Union of Journalists, said the legislation would effectively annul the 12-year-old law on the media, which outlines the basic rights of journalists. He said that law was a "cornerstone of the country we live in today" - since it preceded the country's 1993 constitution and enshrined freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, Russia appeared to be pressuring foreign journalists as well. German public television ARD received a letter from the Russian Embassy in Berlin that accused the station of biased coverage of the hostage crisis, saying it sided with the attackers, who were demanding an end to the war in Chechnya, ARD's Moscow bureau chief Albrecht Reinhardt said Thursday.

"It will depend on your further reporting whether the Russian side can cooperate with ARD and its correspondents in Moscow in the same way as before," Reinhardt quoted the letter as saying.