SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Amid the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin has passed a web of wartime censorship laws. Those laws forced most independent Russian media to close or flee into exile. But there was one exception until this week, as NPR's Charles Maynes reports from Moscow.
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CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Duct tape on boxes...
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MAYNES: ...Desks and chairs storage-bound and one final editorial meeting.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
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MAYNES: After more than 30 years, Russia's oldest and most famous independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, is closing. The publication a victim, say staff, of state pressure amid the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.
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SERGEI SOKOLOV: (Non-English language spoken).
MAYNES: Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov announced the decision in a video last month, saying the Russian state had, quote, "killed" the newspaper, starving it of its ability to publish, raise money, rent an office or report without risk of prison time.
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SOKOLOV: (Non-English language spoken).
MAYNES: Founded in the early 1990s, Novaya Gazeta defended democratic ideals in Russia and criticized authorities when they fell short of them, sometimes at an excruciating cost.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The body of Anna Politkovskaya was found...
ROBERT SIEGEL, BYLINE: She was a prominent critic of the war in Chechnya.
MAYNES: Six of its journalists were killed on the job, including star investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
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MAYNES: On Monday, before cameras, staff remove portraits of all the slain journalists from an office memorial wall and carefully placed them into a box that simply read, ours - keep with care.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: The Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to...
MAYNES: Novaya Gazeta's cofounder, Dmitry Muratov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the paper's defense of press freedoms, liberties that Muratov says are more under threat than ever.
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DMITRY MURATOV: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: "Repressions in Russia today are now sweeping in nature," he told a crowd of journalists outside the Novaya Gazeta office Monday, adding that Russia's security services effectively now ran the country. Following the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this paper was one of the few independent media organizations to continue working inside Russia whose censorship laws forced other outlets and half of Novaya Gazeta's staff into exile.
TATIANA BRITSKAYA: (Non-English language spoken).
MAYNES: Novaya Gazeta journalist Tatiana Britskaya says, "yes, that's meant operating within certain limits." The trade-off, she says, has been worth it. Despite occasional criticism, the paper pulled punches.
BRITSKAYA: (Through interpreter) War is not just the battlefield. It's also refugees, political prisoners and people who are against the invasion but stayed. And in describing that, you really are talking about the war.
MAYNES: Meanwhile, pressure on the newspaper never went away. Muratov, the Nobel Prize-winner, was attacked and nearly blinded. The paper's office endured police raids, and all of its employees designated foreign agents, a connotation that hearkens back to Soviet-era enemies of the state.
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DMITRY PESKOV: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Yet Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected charges the government had a role in Novaya Gazeta's demise. Amid a field of stiff competition, said Peskov, the closure was a standard, rational process - in other words, part of the media churn, an explanation Novaya Gazeta staffers reject.
ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: It's a slow strangulation of civil society here, and I feel it for a long time. This is not today's event.
MAYNES: Andrei Kolesnikov, a columnist for the paper, says he hopes the staff can find other ways to continue working together, adding they almost have no choice.
KOLESNIKOV: There is no job for people like us here in the circumstances of a totalitarian regime.
MAYNES: Yet, near him, Muratov was still at work.
MURATOV: (Non-English language spoken).
MAYNES: As a crowd of Russian and foreign journalists gathered around, he held up pictures of Russian political prisoners, called for the evacuation of civilians and an end to bombings of Ukrainian cities. He also said, don't forget there are Russians, millions, who never wanted to attack their neighbor.
MURATOV: (Non-English language spoken).
MAYNES: It was a defiant last act and a plea to keep the stories coming, even as his colleagues revealed a modified version of the newspaper's old office nameplate. It now reads - Novaya Gazeta lived here. Charles Maynes, NPR News, Moscow.
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