Alexander Lebedev was far from jubilant on Wednesday after the official announcement of his takeover of the Evening Standard. Instead, the deep-pocketed Russian oligarch had tragic matters to consider closer to home, with the fatal shootings on Monday of a trainee journalist and a lawyer from Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper he part owns.

“Novaya Gazeta has to be my first priority right now,” he said, in a telephone interview on Wednesday.