Russia: Novaya Gazeta shuttered
In Russia, Novaya Gazeta, the last remaining independent and oppositional media outlet, has been forced to end its operations. Founded in 1993, the renowned investigative newspaper was designated a 'foreign agent' in September and has now been deprived of any possibility to raise funds through donations and evicted from its editorial offices in Moscow.
Total conformity with the state
Political scientist Nikolai Mitrochin draws a sombre conclusion on Facebook:
“Novaya Gazeta managed to survive as a legal newspaper for almost five years under wartime conditions. It remained one of the few democratic initiatives from the 1990s in a state on the brink of military autocracy and totalitarianism. Now it, too, will cease to exist. ... The state is striving for complete transformation into a kind of post-war Stalinist society in which anyone who does not sing from the same hymn sheet or has a 'dubious past' faces imprisonment. Or even death in prison.”
Impressive stamina
Le Monde pays tribute to the newspaper's resilience:
“Since February 2022, its journalists have continued their work as best they could, despite the newspaper having had its licence revoked and its website blocked. ... Factual yet cautious, strictly adhering to increasingly repressive laws and imposing ever-greater self-censorship on itself, Novaya Gazeta refrained from reporting on current events at the front, as even the slightest mention of military matters in an article would have risked prosecution for 'spreading disinformation'. Everything was implied between the lines.”
Final attack against Russian civil society?
Seznam Zprávy still hopes the newspaper will be revived:
“The strident 'We have been killed' in the farewell message is undoubtedly a metaphor. ... It applies to the entire civil society that has emerged in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and which has been, and continues to be, subjected to unprecedented pressure in recent years. But all those who, over the decades, were inspired in one way or another by this newspaper with its unique history to take civic action and then engage in civil disobedience and resistance agree on one thing today: Novaya Gazeta cannot simply disappear. The editorial board will undoubtedly come up with something new as it has already done so many times in the past.”