MOSCOW: Russia’s flagship independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on Monday held its final editorial meeting and emptied its office after it said last month it was closing under the Kremlin’s pressure.
Novaya Gazeta was for years one of the last outlets to openly criticise the authorities and Moscow’s Ukraine war amid a tightening grip on free speech and a campaign against dissent. It was branded a ‘foreign agent’ a label reminiscent of Soviet-era repression and saw its journalists detained and questioned.
On Monday, Novaya Gazeta held its last editorial meeting, the Russian Sota Vision and Ostorozhno Novosti outlets reported.
Images published by Ostorozhno Novosti showed the paper’s editor-in-chief, Sergei Sokolov, taking down photographsof its reporters murdered in killings widely seen as retribution for their work.
They included a picture of Anna Politkovskaya, who spent years investigating allegations of abuses by Russia’s military during its campaigns in Chechnya and was an early critic of President Vladimir Putin’s long rule. She was found dead in her apartment block on Putin’s birthday in October 2006.
In an emotional video last month, Sokolov said the paper had ‘been killed’ and was shutting down after ‘the Russian authorities the Russian special services have forced the editorial team to end its work’.
Rights groups including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International condemned the move.
-AFP