The pool of independent Russian media is getting smaller and smaller the last-standing news organisation now suspending publication.
Novaya Gazeta is now closing its doors in response to two warnings from Russia’s media and telecommunications watchdog.
The latest warning endangered the future of the organisation threatening to revoke its license.
The editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov says he is “forced to suspend the publication of the newspaper and not update the website and our social networks until the end of hostilities on the territory of Ukraine”.
He emphasised that this is a “terrible and difficult decision” but it is necessary to “preserve each other, for each other” and that the team worked until the last possible second.
This all comes as a result of Russia’s crackdown on independent media with the country’s president Vladimir Putin attempting to control the narrative surrounding the Ukraine invasion.
Now, there are no longer any news outlets remaining in Russia that are critical of Putin’s regime.
Some companies have relocated their reporters protecting them from the new law that jails journalists for reporting on the conflict in Ukraine as a ‘war’.
The Kremlin has been convincing Russians that their involvement in Ukraine is a special military operation to denazify the country.
Russia has also been limiting people’s access to social media with Facebook and Twitter already blocked and news outlets including BBC and Voice of America also unable to be accessed.
The newspaper’s chief was all over the media just last week after he announced that Novaya Gazeta is donating his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Medal to the Ukrainian Refugee Fund to be auctioned.
It is unclear when these independent media organisations will be allowed to safely reopen.
