MOSCOW — Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent investigative newspapers, says it is being forced to close, declaring in a statement: “We were killed.”
Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov said the lights would go off at the paper on November 9, ending some 30 years of publication, Al Jazeera reported.
Sokolov had been questioned and his home searched, and press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said he was arrested on October 15. His colleague Oleg Roldugin was arrested in April.
According to Reporters Without Borders, six of the newspaper’s journalists and staff have been murdered over the years. Authorities had designated the paper a “foreign agent.”
The paper’s longtime editor, Dmitry Muratov, shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for defending freedom of expression. Its closure removes one of the few remaining domestic outlets that investigated the Kremlin’s conduct.
Sources: Al Jazeera, The Guardian
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