MOSCOW (The Thursday Times) — Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper whose editor shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, announced on Friday that it is shutting down, saying Russian authorities and the intelligence services had forced it to close.
“The newspaper is gone,” the editorial board said in a statement headlined “We were killed”. Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov said in a video posted on YouTube that the staff would “turn off the lights” in the newsroom they had occupied for 30 years on November 9, shut down the servers and leave.
The closure follows weeks of mounting pressure. Earlier this month, authorities searched Sokolov’s home and took him in for questioning over a criminal case against his colleague Oleg Roldugin, who was arrested in April and charged with “unlawful access to computerised information”. Reporters Without Borders said Sokolov was arrested on October 15.
“Six of its journalists and staff members have been murdered, its newsroom has been raided, its journalists have been prosecuted, and the publication has been designated a ‘foreign agent’,” the press freedom group said. Among those killed was the investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in Moscow in 2006.
Founded in 1993, the paper had already scaled back inside Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when authorities revoked its media licence. Its then editor, Dmitry Muratov, shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to safeguard freedom of expression. Exiled former staff publish a separate edition, Novaya Gazeta Europe, from Riga.
