Novaya Gazeta closure ends 30 years of Russian reporting

Russia’s oldest independent paper, Novaya Gazeta, will close after three decades, in a Novaya Gazeta closure staff blame on the authorities.

“They’ve killed us,” the paper said in a farewell statement on its website. It added that the authorities and security services had forced the newsroom to stop work.

What the Novaya Gazeta closure involves

The newspaper plans one last edition. After that, it will shut its servers and leave its Moscow office on November 9, which completes the Novaya Gazeta closure.

It remains unclear how many people will lose their jobs. Also, the staff say they will end up on the street, with no income and under constant threat of repression.

On October 29, the newsroom heard that it must leave its home on Potapovsky Lane in central Moscow. Alongside the eviction letter, the system that let readers send donations went dead.

In its statement, the paper called this “a coordinated operation.” It rejected the banks’ explanation that they acted under internal rules and pointed to pressure from the security services.

Years of pressure before the Novaya Gazeta closure

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, helped launch the paper in 1993. It won a reputation for tough investigations of graft, police violence, rigged votes and rights abuses in Chechnya.

Six of its reporters have died over the years in killings that rights groups link to their work. They include the investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, whose murder reached its 20th anniversary this year.

Soon after Vladimir Putin launched his full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the paper stopped printing. Censorship laws had turned critical war coverage into a near crime. Courts then cancelled its media licence, and it moved online.

In 2021, the Nobel Peace Prize honoured Muratov, the paper’s former editor, for his work protecting free expression. However, the authorities later labelled him and several journalists foreign agents.

Arrests, raids and the foreign agent label

However, pressure grew this year. In April, police detained managing editor Oleg Roldugin, whom prosecutors accuse of illegally collecting personal data. He awaits trial.

Earlier this month, officers searched the home of editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov, questioned him and let him go. That search belonged to the Roldugin inquiry.

In September, Russia’s Justice Ministry placed the paper on its list of foreign agents. That list already holds many independent outlets that criticise the war.

Also, the paper pointed to other attacks. Its websites faced blocks, and a correspondent, Elena Milashina, suffered a beating in Chechnya.

Staff fear what comes next

One employee told a news outlet that harsher labels such as “undesirable” or “extremist” might follow. “The only step left on this trajectory is the destruction of the people themselves,” the employee said, speaking without giving a name.

The employee added that the authorities already hold one colleague hostage, Roldugin. In its farewell, the paper said it had worked for almost five years of war under the watch of the security services, and now it sits in the “kill zone.”

Meanwhile, the eviction news arrived while Muratov travelled to France for a memorial for Politkovskaya. For now, the Novaya Gazeta closure leaves Russia with fewer independent voices, and its staff face an uncertain future.