For Novaya Gazeta, a bastion of free press in Moscow, the end has come. “They killed us,” the editorial team of Dmitry Muratov, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize (with Philippine journalist Maria Ressa), warned on Friday, October 30. “They” refers to the special services of the FSB (Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB). In a letter published by Le Monde, current editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov described the “coordinated operation” carried out over recent weeks against Russia’s last outspoken media outlet.
“Deprived of means of subsistence and under constant threat of repression,” Novaya Gazeta can no longer continue its work as it had managed to do over nearly five years of war. “On November 9, we will turn off the lights in our home, where we have lived for 30 years. We will shut down the servers and leave,” wrote Sokolov. “The newspaper no longer exists.”
‘They killed us’: The farewell letter by Russia’s free newspaper ‘Novaya Gazeta,’ forced by authorities to close In March 2022, blocked by authorities after its opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Novaya Gazeta (originally a thrice-weekly print publication) chose to halt all publication temporarily. Since then, it found other ways to operate. Exiled journalists founded Novaya Gazeta Europe to continue their reporting. This autonomous outlet will continue to exist. In Moscow, despite bans and threats, Muratov and his team persist publishing in other formats, mainly on the internet and through an occasional print version with fewer than 1,000 copies, the threshold above which registration as a media outlet is required.
In recent months, the pressure escalated against the Moscow newsroom, which, since the newspaper’s founding in 1993, had tirelessly investigated corruption, state violence and human rights violations. For five years, the team resisted from Potapovsky Lane, the newspaper’s historic headquarters. But on April 9, the police conducted a 13-hour search and seizure operation at those offices, confiscating computers, electronic devices and many important documents from Muratov’s safe. They arrested one journalist, Oleg Roldugin, who was placed under house arrest pending trial. Charged with “illegally collecting and disseminating computer information containing personal data,” he faces up to six years in prison.
‘Foreign agents’
Then, in September, the courts added Novaya Gazeta to its list of foreign agents. Muratov was already designated as such – number 665 in the register maintained by the Ministry of Justice, where around one hundred names, mostly journalists and contributors to the newspaper, have since been added. Unlike many other independent publications, Novaya Gazeta had so far avoided this classification, which, reminiscent of the Soviet-era label “enemies of the people,” imposes countless Kafkaesque formalities. On October 15, the noose tightened further. Sokolov, already arrested in 2024 and prosecuted for “discrediting the armed forces” over an article, was detained by police. After a search at his Moscow home, he was questioned for several hours by the Investigative Committee. Reporters Without Borders denounced “new escalation in the authorities’ relentless campaign against this emblematic independent Russian media outlet.”
Journalists in Russia: ‘It’s much more dangerous today than it was under perestroika’ Released, Sokolov immediately returned to the newspaper. But, in his own words, Novaya Gazeta has since found itself in a “killing zone,” with its journalists “surrounded on all sides by security services.” A special operation targeted the newsroom. The same day it received an eviction notice demanding its departure from its historic headquarters, the authorities simultaneously disabled the donation system that, for five years, had allowed the outlet to receive reader financial support.
“We can no longer exist,” Muratov warned as early as October 20, at an event in Paris organized by Le Monde and the Théâtre de la Ville in tribute to Anna Politkovskaya, murdered on October 7, 2006, outside her Moscow home and one of six Novaya Gazeta journalists killed under Putin’s regime. “Does Article 29 of the Russian Constitution, ‘Censorship is prohibited,’ not sound today like a grim joke?” the editorial team denounced in its farewell letter. “The real betrayal is when the state betrays its own Constitution. And that betrayal is a crime unfolding right now, before the entire world. The assassination of Novaya Gazeta is further proof.” In Russia, more than 30 journalists from various media outlets are currently in prison. Factual but cautious, meticulously complying with increasingly repressive laws and practicing growing self-censorship, Novaya Gazeta had managed to survive since 2022. This is no doubt thanks to the international stature of Muratov’s Nobel Peace Prize; he is one of the newspaper’s founders. For a long time, it was also due to the personality of one of its shareholders, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader and architect of Perestroika, who died on August 30, 2022. These two moral guarantees, by October 2026, were not enough to save Novaya Gazeta from the FSB’s operation