During
parliamentary elections in 1999 and
presidential elections in 2000, NTV was critical of the
Second Chechen War,
Vladimir Putin and the political party
Unity backed by him. In the puppet show
Puppets in the beginning of February 2000, the puppet of Putin acted as Little Zaches in a story based on
E.T.A. Hoffmann's
Little Zaches Called Cinnabar, in which blindness causes villagers to mistake an evil gnome for a beautiful youth. This provoked a fierce reaction from Putin's supporters. On 8 February the newspaper
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti published a letter signed by the Rector of
St. Petersburg State University Lyudmila Verbitskaya, the Dean of its Law Department
Nikolay Kropachyov and some of Putin's other presidential campaign assistants that urged the prosecution of the authors of the show for what they considered a
criminal offence. Putin's government
took actions against
NTV in response to the series, including raids on its parent media holding. These measures led to the cancellation of
Puppets in 2002, as well as the expulsion of much of NTV’s editorial staff. Some Russian liberal journalists and public intellectuals at the time justified the actions against NTV and Kukly, arguing that strengthening the state was necessary to address the country's problems. Critics later described these responses as early signs of acquiescence to Putin's emerging repressive policies. ==
Spitting in Russian==