Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last remaining independent news outlets, has announced it will suspend its activities until the end of the war in Ukraine after receiving a second warning from state censorship over alleged violations of the country’s “foreign agents” law.
The warning came a day after its editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a group interview with Russian journalists that was quickly banned by state media regulator Roskomnadzor.
Novaya Gazeta is one of the country’s most important independent publications. A number of its journalists have been killed since the 1990s in retaliation for their reporting, including on the war in Chechnya.
The Roskomnadzor warning to Novaya Gazeta was allegedly prompted by the newspaper’s failure to identify a “foreign agent” in an unspecified publication. But it appeared to be an act of retaliation for the newspaper’s decision to cover the war and Muratov’s participation in the interview with Zelenskyy.
To avoid closure, the paper announced its surprise decision to suspend publication until the end of the Russian “special operation,” the Kremlin’s official term for the invasion.
“We have received another warning from Roskomnadzor,” the Novaya Gazeta editorial board wrote in a statement. “Following this, we will suspend the publication of the newspaper online and in print until the end of the ‘special operation on the territory of Ukraine’.”
The editors noted that the newspaper’s license could be revoked because it had received two warnings from Roskomnadzor. She received the first warning last week.
Muratov, who received the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to support journalistic freedoms in Russia, had decided to continue publishing Novaya Gazeta while complying with a Roskomnadzor policy that prohibits journalists from describing the conflict as “war” or “invasion.” ” to call.
While other channels such as Echo of Moscow and TV Rain were banned from Russia, Novaya Gazeta continued to report on the war and the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy. It is one of the few Russian news agencies to have a correspondent in Ukraine who files reports on the impact of the war on Ukrainians.
“I want to express my full solidarity with Novaya Gazeta, its journalists and its editor-in-chief,” wrote Alexey Venediktov, the former editor of Echo of Moscow. “I hope that you will soon return to your readers and therefore to me.”