Russian published reporting newspaper closes Moscow newsroom under state pressure

Russian published reporting newspaper Novaya Gazeta says it has closed its Moscow newsroom after holding a final editorial meeting on November 9. The closure follows its announcement last month that official pressure and its designation as a foreign agent had made continued operations impossible.

The newspaper said banks stopped processing reader donations after the September designation, cutting off funding on which it depended. It had continued reporting online from Moscow after suspending its print edition inside Russia in 2022, when censorship tightened following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Co-founder Dmitry Muratov criticised the closure as a denial of readers' rights and said constitutional protections had been undermined. The UN human rights chief had described the planned shutdown as another severe blow to independent media. The Kremlin, by contrast, characterised the closure as part of a normal cycle of change.

The paper's history includes investigations into corruption and criticism of government policy. Several of its journalists have been killed, including Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. Those deaths form part of its history; they should not be presented as newly established findings about responsibility for the current closure.

UPDATE: The latest account confirms the newsroom has closed, replacing the earlier announcement that it would shut on November 9. It does not describe an independently negotiated reprieve or a resumed Moscow operation.