Novaya Gazeta to close after authorities strip its newsroom, funding and legal right to publish

Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia's best-known independent newspapers, has announced it will close permanently next month. Its staff say they were left with no workable path: the paper has lost its newsroom, its donation platforms and its legal right to publish. Former editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel peace prize in 2021.

Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov announced the decision on the paper's website. "This is not just our own story; it is the story of a country and a society that are being systematically crushed," he wrote. He also described how the paper had worked for nearly five years of the war, entirely encircled by the security services, and said that it had now ended up in a "kill zone." He replaced the word "war" with stars, because Russian law requires journalists to call the conflict in Ukraine a "special military operation" or face consequences.

The paper launched in the 1990s and for many years was partly funded by Mikhail Gorbachev, the late Soviet leader. It built its name on long-form reporting about corruption, rights abuses and social issues. Six of its journalists have been assassinated over the years, among them Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment block in 2006.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made independent reporting in Russia nearly impossible and gutted the country's media landscape. Novaya answered with a special bilingual Russian-Ukrainian edition in the days after the invasion, calling the war "madness" on its front page. The Kremlin then brought in harsh censorship laws requiring outlets to publish only the official Russian account. "We said it's not journalism and we're not going to do that," said Nadezhda Prusenkova, head of the press service. The paper printed blank white spaces where euphemisms and false claims would have gone.

By the end of March 2022 it stopped printing its regular edition. The pressure kept rising. In April that year Muratov was doused with red paint on a train, an attack that damaged his eyesight and which US officials say was ordered by Russian intelligence agencies. In September the paper's licence was revoked, and its website was soon blocked inside Russia.

Staff found ways around the bans. Many left the country, and a number of exiled former employees founded Novaya Gazeta Europe, a legally separate outlet. Muratov and a core team stayed in Russia and published a series of magazines in runs of 999 copies, exploiting a rule that exempts publications under 1,000 copies from licensing. The website kept running, though the state continued to bring new legal threats. Elena Kostyuchenko, who spent 17 years at the paper, called its survival a miracle but also "the daily choice of people who continued to go to work even when it was very scary." She said she felt inspired by her colleagues, and also pained and sad for them.

The last months brought the final blows. In April, journalist Oleg Roldugin was arrested and charged with "unlawful access to computerised information." He is under house arrest awaiting trial, and last month Sokolov's home was searched in connection with the case. This month the landlords told staff to leave their long-time central Moscow offices by 9 November. The building has been the paper's hub for decades and holds a memorial museum to Politkovskaya in her former office; Prusenkova said the exhibits will be taken down and stored for now. All the donation platforms were also shut down, leaving the paper with no funding. Staff said the court case, the eviction and the lack of money left no choice.

"Sometimes it happens that your enemies win," Prusenkova said. "At this moment in time, it seems like they have won, and we have no options left." She added that Novaya's journalists would probably look for some way to keep working: "After all, we don't know how to do anything else." What to watch is whether Novaya Gazeta Europe and other former staff can sustain reporting on Russia from outside the country.