Tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky's arrest is turning into a watershed for President Vladimir Putin, with observers saying that the president’s response after his return from Europe could determine the future shape of his presidency.

And although most agree that Gusinsky's arrest Tuesday afternoon was an act of political vengeance that bore no relationship to the legal case cited against him, speculation is centering on who orchestrated the arrest and how Putin will react when he arrives in Moscow on June 17.

"Now, [Putin] has a real chance to become president in fact and not just in name," said Oleg Kiselyov, chairman of the board of directors of Impeksbank and one of 17 executives who wrote to Putin expressing their concern at Gusinsky's detention.

"Everything depends on Putin. If he doesn't make use of the situation to prove his independence and show his commitment to the interests of the voters – he was voted in after all, not appointed – then it will be a wasted opportunity."

Kiselyov said, in theory, Putin could demonstrate that he was equally distant from all of the oligarchs by allowing the conflict with Gusinsky to be resolved legally – by simultaneously allowing the prosecutor general to proceed with the case, while removing members of "the Family" from the Kremlin.

Firing members of the Family – a group of political and business insiders that reportedly dominates the nation's affairs, and includes Presidential Administration chief Alexander Voloshin – would demonstrate Putin's independence, Kiselyov said.

• ‘Old Oligarchy’
Kiselyov said he didn't see Gusinsky – chief of Media-MOST, which controls some of Russia’s most liberal media outlets: NTV Television, radio Echo Moscow and the Segodnya newspaper – as a symbol of corruption, but rather as a symbol of the self-made man.

"I don’t think [Gusinsky] was chosen as a symbol of the fight against corruption or even as a symbol of the opposition media, as everyone is fearing, but as a symbol of the old oligarchy," Kiselyov said. "My version of events is that the new oligarchy is trying to gain legitimacy. At the moment, they are kept at equal distance, like the old oligarchs."

The old oligarchy referred to constitutes the original seven businessmen – including Gusinsky, Vladimir Potanin and Boris Berezovsky – who grew fabulously wealthy under the "loans for shares" privatization in the early years of the Yeltsin administration. The new oligarchy reportedly consists of figures like Roman Abramovich and the CEO of MDM Bank, Alexander Mamut, who acquired their influence in Yeltsin's later years. The status of Berezovsky in this new group remains unclear.

Along with Kiselyov, among 17 signatories to the letter to Putin protesting Gusinsky's detention were the chief of the national electricity grid RAO UES, Anatoly Chubais; and Alfa Bank president and reputed Kremlin bagman, Pyotr Aven. Conspicuous in their absence, however, were Abramovich and Berezovsky, who, though now State Duma deputies, are believed to continue to exercise influence inside the Kremlin through the Family, and particularly the agency of Voloshin.

Still, doubt was cast on Voloshin's involvement in the affair by Kiselyov's colleague, Aven, who said he spoke to the head of the Presidential Administration shortly after news of Gusinsky's arrest broke.

"I did call Voloshin," Aven told The Russia Journal shortly after the press conference called by the 17 executives. "[Voloshin's] reaction was not really clear. But he certainly didn't sanction the decision. It was the prosecutor's office, definitely the prosecutor's office. It seemed the Presidential Administration really did not know what was going on."

Voloshin's boss, Putin, who was in Spain on the first leg of a weeklong swing through Europe when the magnate's arrest was announced, quickly found his agenda overshadowed as journalists and foreign representatives continually raised the issue of Gusinsky's arrest.

Putin was initially hesitant in his responses, telling reporters he knew nothing of Gusinsky's arrest in advance but promising to look into the issue. The following day, though, when asked what he had discovered, the president glibly said that he had been unable to reach the prosecutor.

"Last night, I tried to find the prosecutor general. He is not in Moscow. Where is he? I do not know. But this will not be passed aside," Putin said at a press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Anzar in Madrid.

However, by Thursday, then in Berlin meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Putin was describing the tycoon's arrest and incarceration in Moscow's notorious 18th-century Butyrskaya prison as "excessive."

"It would have been possible to insist he not leave the country, but I can't prevent it," Putin said of the prosecutor general's decision to jail the magnate rather than request he remain in Russia. "It should have been possible to handle this without an arrest." The president also denied the affair was anything other than a legal matter.

The Russian media and representatives of foreign countries were not as sanguine, focusing – unlike Putin – on the fact that Gusinsky heads Russia's only private and relatively independent media organization.

• Not a ‘vacuum’
In an interview with NTV broadcast in Moscow on Thursday, U.S. First Assistant Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said his country’s administration "did not see Gusinsky's arrest in a vacuum isolated from other events."

Talbott described "a pattern," which included the raid on Media-MOST's headquarters in May, the concerns expressed by Russian political figures who saw political motives behind the actions and, additionally, an attempt to pressure the free press.

Talbott quoted Putin as having told U.S. President Bill Clinton that Russia had "no future if it applied pressure on a civic society and the free press."

"Now we are seeing a tension between events and words," Talbott said of Gusinsky's arrest. "We hope this tension will subside so that events confirm the words we heard."

• CEO trip canceled
Meanwhile, a delegation of U.S. CEOs canceled a trip to Russia designed to assess investment opportunities in the country in response to the Gusinsky case, the New York Times reported.

The delegation head, Robert Strauss, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he knew Gusinsky personally and that he considered it inappropriate to promote commercial investment in Russia when a media-magnate well known for criticizing the president had been jailed. Strauss said the imprisonment brought up "political and juridical questions about Russia"

Media-MOST journalists were even more forthright in their interpretation of events.

Dmitry Pinsker, political correspondent for the respected Itogi magazine, said it was definitely possible to see Gusinsky's arrest as a threat to freedom of speech. He echoed Talbott's comments that the process began before Gusinsky's detention.

"You can start the countdown from the moment Voloshin called MOST a 'systemic opposition,'" Pinsker said. "I know that back then, there was already discussion of finding some way to close this shop down. But they don’t have the resolve to just close the company."

Pinsker said there was an attempt to silence the company through any means possible, while still keeping a semblance of respect for freedom of speech the whole time.

• Not against speech ‘in their favor’
"They have nothing against freedom of speech, so long as it’s speech in their favor," Pinsker said of the Kremlin. "I think there is now a serious threat to the existence of a solid and independent business, [one] not financially dependent on the authorities." He also said that he found it impossible to believe Putin was caught unaware.

"I don’t believe that the president knew anything about what happened. I don’t imagine how he could have been unable to get in touch with the prosecutor general," he said.

UES chief Chubais, however, said he did believe Putin was unaware of the magnate's impending arrest, saying that from his own experience in government, he understood that decisions like Gusinsky's detention could be taken without the head of state's knowledge. Chubais cited a lengthy conversation he had with the president Tuesday morning, during which, he said, Putin had given no hint of what was about to happen.

"So, I think it is possible that the decision was taken at a lower level, following the ‘hey, I’ll help out my boss’ scenario," Chubais said. But he cautioned that Putin needed to make a decisive response quickly.

"For the moment, the authorities’ line is 'we don’t know, we’re sorting things out.’ Well, sort things out then and take a stand."