Novaya Gazeta closes after 33 years under state pressure; staff leave Moscow newsroom to cries of “Thank you!”

Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s best-known independent media outlets, has shut down after 33 years, saying it was closing under pressure from the authorities and the security services, Meduza reported. The paper had kept working inside Russia even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In late October its journalists learned they were being evicted from their office on Potapovsky Lane in central Moscow, where they had worked for 29 years.

The last day

On 9 November, editor-in-chief Sergey Sokolov led the final editorial meeting, attended by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder Dmitry Muratov. “For now, I want to stress, the newspaper no longer exists. But the journalists are still here,” Sokolov said, adding that there are “far more ways to exist than the Russian authorities can handle.”

Staff then took down the portraits of colleagues killed over the years: journalists Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, freelance contributor Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Readers outside greeted the departing journalists with applause and shouts of “Thank you!”; flowers were laid at Politkovskaya’s memorial plaque, and the sign was covered with the words “Novaya Gazeta lived here.”

Reactions

The Kremlin described the closure as “a normal process of turnover.” Muratov urged people not to equate Russians with the government waging war against Ukraine and to remember political prisoners. “Novaya Gazeta will return to you,” Sokolov told readers.