The president has spoken. But the irrelevance of presidential rhetoric, plans and ambitions could not be more palpable in the events unfolding in Moscow this week.

There is little to add to the economic agenda laid out by President Putin in his State of the Union address. We agree with most observers that it is ambitious, realistic and liberal, but we also know that it will not be implemented because the government does not have enough talent and commitment to carry out real reform.

The biggest barrier to the nation's progress is the army of mediocre technocrats and bureaucrats that has been eating away at the foundations of the country's economy for decades. While Putin is right in trying to implement military reform and deserves massive credit for his bold moves, he must now focus on implementation rather than just planning in the economy and the social sphere. Russia has seen dozens of excellent programs and thousands of good ideas in the past 10 years. It is the criminality deeply rooted in the Russian bureaucratic system that Putin is up against, not the poor economic fundamentals of plans.

The president needs to build a Cabinet with men and women of character, strength, political and moral will and love for their country. This is not the time to let technocrats and mediocre bureaucrats fiddle with the country's budgets and fate. We hope the so-called "professionals" in the Russian Cabinet go back to serving junior managerial tasks under newly appointed political heavyweights that are willing to put their political futures at stake and carry out unpopular and difficult tasks as laid out by the president. Putin is trying too hard to look like an economist now. It is time he looked and acted like a president.

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While we laud Putin's largely successful year in the Kremlin and his commitment to liberal and free-market reform, we cannot but grieve for the gravest failure thus far of his political career and its implications for Russian democracy. The president has actively colluded in the dismantling of the only free media group in Russia. Moreover, he has done so in collusion with the privatization gang of the Yeltsin/Chubais years who have shown that they still retain the camaraderie they developed while Russia was being looted in the name of voucher privatizations and loans-for-shares scams.

Although we shall not yet write an obituary for NTV and the publications of Media-MOST – the daily newspaper Sevodnya and weekly magazine Itogi – it will be a dark day for Russia if newspapers realize that freedom of speech has lost and that while robbers run business concerns unchallenged, a single crook has been hounded only because he ran a free media group that employs some of the finest journalists in the country.

The newly inaugurated CEO of NTV, Boris Jordan, has no credentials that qualify him for this job except his relations with Alfred Kokh and the confidence he puts in his abilities. Theirs is a relationship tested when the biggest robbery in history – the privatization of Russia – took place, and they were both at the heart of that process. He is, indeed, a shrewd investor who made the right deals at the right time with the right people, but the appointment of Jordan as head of NTV will be written in black letters in the history of free Russia and its free media. His ability to deliver profits to shareholders and attracting new investments from Gazprom or foreign investors may not be in doubt, but he has taken the reins of the company without making an investment (old habits die hard – grab a chunk of Russia and pay nothing) through roguish methods and strong-arm tactics.

Now, besides TV, the federal and Moscow governments, Gazprom and some regional governments own most large circulation newspapers. Two dailies have closed recently and Russia is left with hardly six national papers. The most important print media publishing group of the country, Independent Media – Dutch-owned and managed with partnerships and shareholding from Dow Jones, Pearson, Hearts, Playboy, VNU, Roald, etc. – points to how things could turn out for a restructured NTV. The foreign-owned daily newspaper of this group – Vedomosti – treats political issues with kid gloves.

The Russian government – having killed the more legitimate, moral dissent from the leading voices of the country – can then pretend to be even-handed as the rest of the media is taken over by "American bankers" and "media corporations."

That leaves Russian journalists with few, equally distasteful choices. First, work for the government or one of its PR fronts like Gleb Pavlovsky's fund – which of late has found a publishing partner in foreign-owned Independent Media. Second, work for media groups run by "American bankers," as long as they toe the line. Third, publish articles for money. Fourth, join a soup-kitchen line sponsored by George Soros or some other philanthropist who might throw some change their way.

The plight of the Russian media is not of Putin's making. But as a guarantor of the Constitution, democracy and free speech, he must recognize that there can be no democratic and prosperous Russia without a strong, divergent, free and vibrant media. And even as he silently watches the culling of the last free media company in the country he could perhaps redeem himself. He could order his cabinet to take $200 million from the budget surplus or ask for debt relief from Western nations by setting a free media foundation run by "bankers," journalists and intellectuals – to invest in and support the creation of free media in the country. The alternatives being practiced now are unacceptable. Russia cannot trade its Yevgeny Kiselyov for Tom Brokaw just as it cannot trade Solzhenitsyn for Jerry Springer.

It is time to draw the line. It is time for every journalist, publisher, author and reader to throw their moral weight behind the men and women at NTV and say firmly, and in unison, that freedom of speech is sacred.