Independent Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper shuts down

Russia’s flagship independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on Monday held its final editorial meeting and emptied its office after it said last month it was closing under the Kremlin’s pressure. Novaya Gazeta was for years one of the last outlets to openly criticise the authorities and Moscow’s Ukraine war amid a tightening grip on free speech and a campaign against dissent.

It was branded a “foreign agent” – a label reminiscent of Soviet-era repression – and saw its journalists detained and questioned. On Monday, Novaya Gazeta held its last editorial meeting, the Russian Sota Vision and Ostorozhno Novosti outlets reported. Images published by Ostorozhno Novosti showed the paper’s editor-in-chief, Sergei Sokolov, taking down photographs of its reporters murdered in killings widely seen as retribution for their work.

They included a picture of Anna Politkovskaya, who spent years investigating allegations of abuses by Russia’s military during its campaigns in Chechnya and was an early critic of President Vladimir Putin’s long rule. She was found dead in her apartment block on Putin’s birthday in October 2006. In an emotional video last month, Sokolov said the paper had “been killed” and was shutting down after “the Russian authorities — the Russian special services – have forced the editorial team to end its work”.

Rights groups including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International condemned the move. The newspaper’s closure was “yet another devastating blow for remaining independent media in the Russian Federation” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement in October. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday called it “a normal cycle of change”.

“It would be wrong to say that the era of independent Russian media is coming to an end. The Russian media is highly diverse and is developing in a highly competitive environment,” Peskov told reporters. Moscow has introduced unprecedented censorship while troops fight in Ukraine, forcing most independent media into exile. 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.