Novaya Gazeta Shuts Moscow Newsroom After Years of Russian State Pressure
Russia's best known independent investigative newspaper, co-founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, has closed its Moscow office, saying it can no longer report under a sustained campaign of Kremlin pressure.
By Hiroshi Ferrari ·
Novaya Gazeta, Russia's best known independent investigative newspaper, closed its Moscow newsroom on Monday, saying it could no longer continue its reporting under a sustained campaign of state pressure.
The outlet, co-founded by the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, had long ranked among the Kremlin's most prominent critics. In recent years it faced mounting obstacles over its critical coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Authorities designated the paper a "foreign agent," a Soviet-era label revived under President Vladimir Putin, and ordered it to vacate its Moscow offices.
Russian banks were also barred from processing donations from readers and supporters. That income had become vital after the paper moved entirely to online publishing shortly after the invasion, when Moscow introduced new wartime censorship rules.
As journalists gathered in the office to witness the closure, founding editor Dmitry Muratov, who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, issued an appeal for free speech in wartime Russia. "Those in our country who advocate for peace have been denied the right to read what they choose," he said. "We are currently at a point where the section of the Russian constitution that guarantees political and civil rights has ceased to function."
Russia's government sought to play down the significance of the closure. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described it as part of a "rotational process" in a fiercely competitive media landscape.
Founded in 1993, Novaya Gazeta became a flagship of post-Soviet democratic Russia and the glasnost, or openness, era championed by Gorbachev, who put part of his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize money toward launching the publication. Its fearless reporting put it in the crosshairs of Russia's wealthy and powerful, and six of its journalists have been murdered. They included Anna Politkovskaya, who spent years investigating alleged abuses by Russia's military in Chechnya and was found dead in her apartment block in 2006, on Putin's birthday.
Images published in Russian media on Monday showed editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov taking down photographs of Politkovskaya and other reporters believed to have been killed in retribution for their work. When he first announced the closure last month, Sokolov said the outlet had "been killed," accusing the Russian authorities and special services of forcing the editorial team to end its work.
Muratov also called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and urged foreign observers to remember the strength of dissent that endures in Russia even as it is pushed underground by censorship and intimidation. "I urge you to distinguish between the Russian authorities and the Russian people," he said, adding that blame should not fall on citizens, "especially the wonderful, truly remarkable younger generation." He also demanded the release of around 4,000 people he described as political prisoners.
Novaya Gazeta's leadership has not made clear whether the Moscow closure marks a definitive end, or whether the outlet might regroup and operate from outside Russia, as several publications, including DW, have been forced to do in recent years. One of its journalists, Irina Vorobyova, said the paper's spirit would survive like a "good virus" and would "continue in everyone that was part of it."
