Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta to close, citing pressure from ‘special services’
The newspaper said authorities and security services forced its newsroom to end operations after years of censorship, detentions and funding cuts.
- On Friday, Novaya Gazeta, Russia's oldest independent newspaper, announced it is ceasing operations after more than three decades. Editor-in-Chief Sergei Sokolov said Russian authorities forced the editorial team to end its work.
- The newspaper faced years of state pressure after the Justice Ministry designated it a "foreign agent" in September. Staff wrote in a farewell statement they operated within a "kill zone" for five years under constant surveillance.
- Authorities recently detained employees, including questioning Sokolov earlier this month and arresting colleague Oleg Roldugin on charges of "unlawful access to computerised information." The publication will vacate its Moscow office and shut down servers on November 9.
- This closure coincides with former Editor-in-Chief Dmitry Muratov, who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression," attending a memorial for murdered reporter Anna Politkovskaya. Six journalists have been killed over the years in what rights groups believe were retaliatory assassinations.
- Founded with support from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993, the outlet built a reputation for exposing corruption and human rights abuses. Its closure marks the culmination of a broader crackdown that pushed most independent journalists into exile since Russia's 2022 Ukraine invasion.
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“We have been killed”: Novaya Gazeta, the last major independent newsroom still working from inside Russia, closes after losing its Moscow office and its reader donations in the same week
Novaya Gazeta will turn off its servers and leave its office on Moscow's Potapovsky Lane on 9 November, ending more than 30 years of work, the editorial staff said in a statement published on 30 October. The paper will publish one final issue. The closure removes what The Economist called Russia's "last free newspaper." Novaya Gazeta had repeatedly exposed evidence of Russia's aggression against Ukraine: in 2015, it published a memo that, it sai…
The newspaper survived in Russia in an increasingly hostile environment, as a result of heightened political repression.
The blocking of funds and judicial investigations force the daily newspaper to close. It is the last act of a repressive plan that in five years led to the closure of at least 30 newspapers. Niccolò Pianciola (Memorial Italy): "Novaja Gazeta represented a Russia capable of questioning the power and denouncing the corruption and violence of the State"
For more than thirty years, the journalists of the "Novaya" have been reporting on everything that moves their country. Corruption, poverty, war. Some of them paid for their work with life.
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- 41% of the sources lean Left
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