'They killed us': Novaya Gazeta, Russia's last independent newspaper, will shut on November 9 after relentless state pressure
Novaya Gazeta's masthead, whose editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov said Russian security services had forced the team to close, with journalist Oleg Roldugin arrested in April and remaining under house arrest.
Novaya Gazeta, founded in 1993 with Nobel Peace Prize money from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, will close its Moscow office on November 9 after authorities evicted its staff, stripped it of its donation systems and prosecuted its managing editor Oleg Roldugin. Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov said the paper had found itself in a "kill zone" after nearly five years of operating surrounded by intelligence services. Six of its journalists were murdered over the decades for their work, including Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in her Moscow apartment block in 2006.
Co-founder Dmitry Muratov, 65, who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, said authorities jailed a staffer, raided Sokolov's home, then seized the building.
Police also cut off Novaya Gazeta's reader donation platform, destroying its last source of funding alongside the lease termination.
The Anna Politkovskaya Museum, housed in the same Moscow building, will also close its doors on November 9.
