• The 53-year-old was filmed hitting billionaire Sergei Polonsky in 2011
  • He will work 150 hours altogether in shifts of two to four hours a day

By Ted Thornhill

Media tycoon Alexander Lebedev is to be put to work cleaning or repairing a remote Russian village as punishment for throwing punches at a property mogul on a TV show.  

The 53-year-old owner of the London Evening Standard and The Independent titles will serve his 150-hour punishment in Popovka, some 140 miles south of Moscow.  

‘I will have to work two to four hours a day,’ he said.  ’I am not sure when it starts but I will report to the local penal service authority later today.

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Punishment: Russian entrepreneur Alexander Lebedev will do community work in the remote village of Popovka

Punishment: Russian entrepreneur Alexander Lebedev will do community work in the remote village of Popovka

‘I am ready to do whatever they tell me.’

Lebedev spoke after reporting to the prison authorities in Moscow on Monday where he was forced to have his fingers and palm prints taken.

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His street cleaning or equivalent punishment was expected to be in Moscow, but last week he moved his ‘propiska’, or official registration of residency, from the capital to the remote village with a population of 620, where he also owns a giant potato farm.

‘It is my right as a citizen,’ he said.  

‘I thought it would be much more useful in Popovka village. There is enough public work to do there, for instance, to repair a nursery and a playground.  

‘I have somewhere to live there.’

Lebedev was convicted in July of throwing punches at billionaire Sergei Polonsky during a TV talk show in 2011.

A draconian charge of ‘hooliganism motivated by political hatred’, under which Mr Lebedev could have been jailed for up to five years, was withdrawn.

It had been seen by critics as an attack on press freedom. Mr Lebedev, 53, owns major Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta. His son Evgeny, who sat beside his father in court earlier this year, controls the day to day business of the London Evening Standard and The Independent titles.

Before the verdict, property mogul Mr Polonsky had called for Mr Lebedev to be acquitted and even the state prosecutor pleaded for the hooliganism charge to be dropped.

However, the sentence is less than the 21 months’ probation prosecutors had called for.

Lebedev didn't pull any punches: The tycoon lashed out during a TV debate

Lebedev didn't pull any punches: The tycoon lashed out during a TV debate