‘They killed us’: Russia’s last independent newspaper falls silent amid pressure from Kremlin

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Novaya Gazeta , one of Russia’s last independent news outlets, announced on Friday it would close down operations due to pressure from authorities.

“Novaya Gazeta has been killed,” Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov said in a video statement. “On November 9, we will turn off the lights in the home where we have lived for 30 years. We will shut down our servers and leave…The Russian security services have forced the editorial team to cease operations.”

The newspaper, once edited by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, has long been seen as a beacon of Russian investigative reporting.

Founded in the early 1990s partially under the patronage of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Novaya Gazeta had an adversarial relationship with the Kremlin, but had been under immense pressure from Russian authorities amid a widespread crackdown on the country’s media following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russian lawmakers criminalized the spread of “fake” news that discredits the Russian military in March 2022, forcing scores of journalists including those working at Novaya Gazeta to flee into exile. An offshoot publication, Novaya Gazeta Europe, is based in Riga, Latvia.

Sokolov told CNN he believes Novaya Gazeta’s fate reflected the situation in Russian society more broadly which faces a suppressed media landscape.

“The information space in Russia has disappeared,” Sokolov said. “People do not know, and have no way of finding out, even what is happening in the neighboring street, because the sources of news available to them are either stories about a Russia that does not exist or propaganda promoting the way of thinking the ruling elite wants to impose on the public.”

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Novaya Gazeta initially suspended publication of its online and print editions in Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after receiving a warning from Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor. The move came after Muratov took part, alongside other prominent independent Russian journalists, in an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in March 2022.

Novaya Gazeta has a long history of investigating corruption and wrongdoing by various organs of the Russian state. Co-founder Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2021 alongside Philippines journalist Maria Ressa for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.”

In April 2022 , Muratov said he was attacked with acetone laced red paint while traveling on a train from Moscow to the city of Samara. The newspaper said in a statement that he nearly lost his sight, and the perpetrators were let go.

Six of the paper’s journalists have been murdered during its three and a half decades of operation, including Anna Politkovskaya, an ardent critic of President Vladimir Putin who reported extensively on human rights abuses in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was murdered outside her Moscow apartment in 2006, on Putin’s birthday.

Muratov and the newspaper itself were labeled “foreign agents.” Russian authorities have increasingly used the label as a way of casting aspersions on the credibility and independence of organizations and people carrying the designation. It’s a sign that the state sees them as associated with foreign influence and carries practical legal implications such as cumbersome financial penalties and reporting requirements.

“We carried on as long as we could, but we were evicted from our home and our donations platform that allowed us to receive financial support from our readers has been shut down,” Novaya Gazeta said in a statement published on Friday. “We have been stripped of all our resources. Entirely.”

Authorities revoked its license and blocked access to its website inside Russia. Oleg Roldugin, an investigative journalist for the paper was arrested earlier this year for “unlawful access to computerized information,” and the editor-in-chief Sokolov was detained for questioning and his home was searched in connection with the case.

In a statement to CNN the paper said, “we cannot continue working under the name ‘Novaya Gazeta.’ ‘Novaya’ no longer exists. One final issue will be published — and that’s it. After that, we’ll take a pause, reflect, and come up with a new life for ourselves.”

Muratov has remained a public voice campaigning for release of Russian political prisoners. The Atlantic in September reported on his efforts to lobby for US diplomacy to release jailed Russian dissidents. While critics say such efforts might potentially aid Putin’s bid for sanctions relief, the paper’s former editor and his international stature apparently could not shield the acclaimed newspaper from Russia’s machinery of repression.

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俄罗斯仅存的几家独立新闻媒体之一《新报》周五宣布，由于受到当局的压力，该报将停止运营。

“《新报》已经消亡了，”总编辑谢尔盖·索科洛夫在一段视频声明中说道。“11月9日，我们将关闭我们居住了30年的家的灯。我们将关闭服务器，离开……俄罗斯安全部门强迫编辑团队停止运作。”

这份报纸曾由诺贝尔和平奖得主德米特里·穆拉托夫担任主编，长期以来一直被视为俄罗斯调查报道的灯塔。

《新报》创办于 20 世纪 90 年代初，部分原因是受到前苏联领导人米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫的庇护。该报与克里姆林宫关系紧张，但在全面入侵乌克兰后，俄罗斯当局对该国媒体进行了广泛的镇压，《新报》也因此承受了巨大的压力。

2022年3月，俄罗斯立法者将传播诋毁俄罗斯军方的“虚假”新闻定为刑事犯罪，迫使包括《新报》（Novaya Gazeta）记者在内的数十名记者流亡海外。《新报》的衍生刊物《新报欧洲版》（Novaya Gazeta Europe）总部设在拉脱维亚首都里加。

索科洛夫告诉 CNN，他认为《新报》的命运反映了俄罗斯社会更广泛的现状，即媒体环境受到压制。

索科洛夫说：“俄罗斯的信息空间已经消失了。人们甚至不知道隔壁街发生了什么事，也无从得知，因为他们能获取的新闻来源要么是关于一个并不存在的俄罗斯的故事，要么是统治精英想要强加给公众的思想宣传。”

伊戈尔·伊万科/法新社/盖蒂图片社

在俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰后，《新报》最初暂停了其在俄罗斯的线上和纸质版发行，此前该报收到了俄罗斯媒体监管机构Roskomnadzor的警告。此举发生在穆拉托夫与其他几位知名的俄罗斯独立记者于2022年3月采访乌克兰总统泽连斯基之后。

《新报》长期以来一直致力于调查俄罗斯国家各机构的腐败和不当行为。联合创始人穆拉托夫因“捍卫言论自由的努力”与菲律宾记者玛丽亚·雷萨共同荣获2021年10月诺贝尔和平奖。

2022年4月，穆拉托夫称，他在从莫斯科乘火车前往萨马拉市的途中，遭到一名男子用掺有丙酮的红色油漆袭击。该报在一份声明中称，他险些失明，而行凶者却被释放了。

该报运营三十五年间，已有六名记者遇害，其中包括安娜·波利特科夫斯卡娅。波利特科夫斯卡娅是俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京的坚定批评者，她曾对车臣的人权侵犯问题进行过大量报道。2006年，在普京生日当天，波利特科夫斯卡娅在莫斯科的公寓外遇害。

穆拉托夫和报社本身都被贴上了“外国代理人”的标签。俄罗斯当局越来越多地使用这一标签来诋毁被贴上此标签的组织和个人的信誉和独立性。这表明俄罗斯政府认为他们与外国势力有关联，并会带来实际的法律后果，例如巨额罚款和繁琐的报告要求。

《新报》周五发表声明称：“我们尽力坚持了下来，但我们被赶出了家门，我们用来接收读者捐款的平台也被关闭了。我们所有的资源都被剥夺了。彻底地。”

当局吊销了该报的营业执照，并封锁了其在俄罗斯境内的网站。该报的调查记者奥列格·罗尔杜金（Oleg Roldugin）今年早些时候因“非法获取计算机信息”被捕，总编辑索科洛夫（Sokolov）也因该案被拘留接受讯问，其住所也遭到搜查。

该报在给CNN的一份声明中表示：“我们不能再以‘Novaya Gazeta’这个名字继续运营了。‘Novaya’这个名字已经不复存在。我们将出版最后一期——仅此而已。之后，我们将暂停一段时间，进行反思，并为自己找到新的出路。”

穆拉托夫一直积极发声，呼吁释放俄罗斯政治犯。《大西洋月刊》9月报道了他游说美国通过外交途径释放被监禁的俄罗斯异见人士的努力。尽管批评人士认为，这些努力或许有助于普京争取解除制裁，但这位报纸的前任主编及其国际声望显然未能使这份备受赞誉的报纸免受俄罗斯镇压机器的打击。