‘They killed us’: Russia’s last independent newspaper falls silent amid pressure from Kremlin

By Zahra Ullah, Anna Chernova, CNN

Moscow (CNN) — Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent news outlets, announced on Friday it would close down operations due to pressure from authorities.

“Novaya Gazeta has been killed,” Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov said in a video statement. “On November 9, we will turn off the lights in the home where we have lived for 30 years. We will shut down our servers and leave…The Russian security services have forced the editorial team to cease operations.”

The newspaper, once edited by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, has long been seen as a beacon of Russian investigative reporting.

Founded in the early 1990s partially under the patronage of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Novaya Gazeta had an adversarial relationship with the Kremlin, but had been under immense pressure from Russian authorities amid a widespread crackdown on the country’s media following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russian lawmakers criminalized the spread of “fake” news that discredits the Russian military in March 2022, forcing scores of journalists including those working at Novaya Gazeta to flee into exile. An offshoot publication, Novaya Gazeta Europe, is based in Riga, Latvia.

Sokolov told CNN he believes Novaya Gazeta’s fate reflected the situation in Russian society more broadly which faces a suppressed media landscape.

“The information space in Russia has disappeared,” Sokolov said. “People do not know, and have no way of finding out, even what is happening in the neighboring street, because the sources of news available to them are either stories about a Russia that does not exist or propaganda promoting the way of thinking the ruling elite wants to impose on the public.”

Novaya Gazeta initially suspended publication of its online and print editions in Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after receiving a warning from Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor. The move came after Muratov took part, alongside other prominent independent Russian journalists, in an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in March 2022.

Novaya Gazeta has a long history of investigating corruption and wrongdoing by various organs of the Russian state. Co-founder Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2021 alongside Philippines journalist Maria Ressa for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.”

In April 2022, Muratov said he was attacked with acetone laced red paint while traveling on a train from Moscow to the city of Samara. The newspaper said in a statement that he nearly lost his sight, and the perpetrators were let go.

Six of the paper’s journalists have been murdered during its three and a half decades of operation, including Anna Politkovskaya, an ardent critic of President Vladimir Putin who reported extensively on human rights abuses in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was murdered outside her Moscow apartment in 2006, on Putin’s birthday.

Muratov and the newspaper itself were labeled “foreign agents.” Russian authorities have increasingly used the label as a way of casting aspersions on the credibility and independence of organizations and people carrying the designation. It’s a sign that the state sees them as associated with foreign influence and carries practical legal implications such as cumbersome financial penalties and reporting requirements.

“We carried on as long as we could, but we were evicted from our home and our donations platform that allowed us to receive financial support from our readers has been shut down,” Novaya Gazeta said in a statement published on Friday. “We have been stripped of all our resources. Entirely.”

Authorities revoked its license and blocked access to its website inside Russia. Oleg Roldugin, an investigative journalist for the paper was arrested earlier this year for “unlawful access to computerized information,” and the editor-in-chief Sokolov was detained for questioning and his home was searched in connection with the case.

In a statement to CNN the paper said, “we cannot continue working under the name ‘Novaya Gazeta.’ ‘Novaya’ no longer exists. One final issue will be published — and that’s it. After that, we’ll take a pause, reflect, and come up with a new life for ourselves.”

Muratov has remained a public voice campaigning for release of Russian political prisoners. The Atlantic in September reported on his efforts to lobby for US diplomacy to release jailed Russian dissidents. While critics say such efforts might potentially aid Putin’s bid for sanctions relief, the paper’s former editor and his international stature apparently could not shield the acclaimed newspaper from Russia’s machinery of repression.

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