Russia just shut down the last independent newspaper in the country. Novaya Gazeta (New Gazette) started operating nearly 30 years ago and quickly got a reputation for being critical of those in power. That approach became costly once Vladimir Putin came to power.
Established in 1993 with money from Mikhail Gorbachev’s Nobel Peace Prize, the paper quickly defined itself through investigative reporting on stories that other Russian outlets wouldn’t dare touch. Its journalists documented the staggering levels of government corruption and the ruthless consolidation of economic power that characterized 1990s Russia.
The following decade, the newspaper’s on-the-ground coverage of the second Chechen war, led by its star reporter Anna Politkovskaya, sealed its reputation as one of the few Russian publications capable of taking on the country’s new president, a ruthless ex-K.G.B. agent named Vladimir Putin. That fearless reporting resulted in Ms. Politkovskaya’s assassination on Mr. Putin’s birthday in 2006. Undeterred, Novaya Gazeta continued to investigate corruption at the highest levels of government, earning its co-founder and longtime editor in chief, Dmitri Muratov, a Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for his “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.”
The invasion of Ukraine and the clampdown on free speech about the "special military operation" was the last straw. Not only did criticism of the war become illegal, the Kremlin took special efforts to make it impossible for Novaya Gazeta to continue operating.
On Feb. 25, 2022, the day after the invasion began, the paper published an edition in Russian and Ukrainian condemning Mr. Putin’s war as “madness.” After the new military censorship laws went into effect, on March 4, the paper was published with blurred images and blank spaces in articles where noncompliant facts or phrases had been removed.
That April, Mr. Muratov was almost blinded when he was attacked with a mixture of paint and acetone at a Moscow train station. The police let his assailants go, despite Novaya Gazeta’s conducting a detailed investigation to identify them. Instead, Russian authorities focused on stripping the newspaper of its print media license...
After almost five years of imposing intolerable conditions on Novaya Gazeta’s remaining staff members in Russia, the Kremlin this year dealt the paper its death blow. After the entire organization was branded a “foreign agent,” banks cut the paper off from reader donations — by then its sole source of income. The paper received an eviction notice, forcing it out of the Moscow office it had called home for nearly 30 years...
Today was the paper's last day.
The Novaya Gazeta newspaper closed its Moscow office on Monday, saying it was not able to continue reporting amid a campaign of state pressure in Russia...
It was branded a "foreign agent," a Soviet-era term resuscitated by President Vladimir Putin's administration, with officials ordering it to vacate its Moscow offices...
Russia's government meanwhile sought to play down the significance of the closure, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it was part of a "rotational process" in a fiercely competitive media landscape.
Steven Rosenberg, who reports on Russia for the BBC, has a story about the closure. He notes that there are still plenty of newspapers to buy in Russia, but none of them contain any criticism of Putin or the war in Ukraine.
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