"We have been killed." Novaya Gazeta announces closure
Russia’s oldest opposition newspaper has declared that it can no longer function due to censorship and repression. Just a day earlier, the paper was served with an eviction notice from its offices, and banks cut off its donation system, on which the newspaper depended to survive.
Novaya Gazeta has announced it is ceasing operations. The statement was published on the newspaper’s website under the headline "We have been killed."
"On 9 November we will turn off the lights in the home where we have lived for 30 years, shut down our servers, and leave. The newspaper no longer exists. The Russian authorities and Russian security services have forced the editorial staff to stop working," the statement reads.
The newspaper describes the pressure it has faced since the start of the full-scale war: censorship, the blocking of its online resources, the stripping of its media registration, the seizure of its printing press, attacks on journalists, a criminal case against editor-in-chief Oleg Roldugin, and its designation as a "foreign agent." The final straw, apparently, came with the events of late October. The editorial staff received a notice of eviction from the building that has housed the newspaper’s offices for 30 years, and, at the same time, Novaya Gazeta’s donation system was cut off.
"This is a coordinated action. No one will be convinced by the banks’ claims that they are acting according to internal corporate rules. These are external rules, established by the state’s repressive apparatus—by FSB officers embedded under the roof of every organisation. They consider the country their property," the newspaper’s statement says.
In 2022, Novaya Gazeta conducted a survey of its readers. The journalists asked what their audience considered more sensible: to cease publication under wartime censorship, or to continue within the constraints. Readers chose the second option, according to Dmitry Muratov, one of the newspaper’s founders.
"For almost five years of *** [the war], we managed to keep working in a tight siege laid by the security services. And now—it’s over. We have ended up in a ‘kill zone,’" the editorial statement says.
Novaya Gazeta was Russia’s oldest opposition newspaper, combining journalism with human rights work. Over its lifetime, six of its journalists were murdered, and many others were attacked and beaten. In 2022, part of the editorial staff left the country and founded Novaya Gazeta Europe.
