Russia’s flagship independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta announced Friday it was closing, saying it had been “killed” by state pressure after years of repression targeting its journalists whose reporting was critical of the Kremlin and its Ukraine war.
The closure of Novaya Gazeta — one of the last outlets to openly criticise Russia’s offensive — marks the latest outcome of Moscow’s campaign against dissenting voices that gained speed after the Kremlin sent troops into its neighbour in 2022.
Since then, the newspaper, long considered a bastion of independent journalism, has seen its media license revoked, while its journalists and editors have been questioned, detained and had their homes searched.
It was also branded a “foreign agent” — a label reminiscent of Soviet-era repression used to stifle dissent.
The paper’s Nobel Prize-winning founder, Dmitry Muratov, told AFP the closure was “part of a giant military campaign being waged by the Russian Federation”.
“We are fierce opponents of war in all its forms. And we are a part that needed to be destroyed,” Muratov, the paper’s former editor-in-chief, said.
Novaya Gazeta’s current editor-in-chief, Sergei Sokolov, said the paper was “ending its existence” in a statement published on YouTube on Friday morning.
In the emotional video, Sokolov said that “the Russian authorities — the Russian special services — have forced the editorial team to end its work.”
Founded in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Novaya Gazeta was one of Russia’s most reputable and renowned organisations reporting and documenting human rights abuses.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, donated some of his Nobel Peace Prize money to help set up the paper.
Rights groups slammed the move.
“Novaya Gazeta will remain THE symbol of free, pluralistic, independent, and rigorous journalism — a model for the entire profession around the world,” Reporters Without Borders chief, Thibaut Bruttin, said on Friday.
